Eugen Merzbacher

Eugen Merzbacher was born in Berlin in 1921. He received his Licentiate from the University of Istanbul in Turkey in 1943 and taught high school in Ankara for the next four years. In 1947 he moved to the United States to attend Harvard University, where he earned his Physics M.A. (1948) and Ph.D. (1950). Merzbacher was a visiting professor at Duke University before joining the faculty of the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill (UNC) in 1952. There he was a two-time acting chairman of the physics department in the 1960s and 1970s. He was named a Kenan Professor in 1969. Merzbacher is probably best known for his influential graduate level Quantum Mechanics textbook, which has so far seen 3 editions, the most recent in 1998. He married Ann Townsend Reid and together they had four children: Celia, Charles, Matthew and Mary. He received UNC's 1972 Thomas Jefferson Award and went on to chair the physics department from 1977 until 1982. Merzbacher retired in 1991. In 1993, UNC presented him with an honorary doctorate in science.