Dr. Marx Brook

July 12, 1920 -- September 3, 2002

Dr. Marx Brook

Marx Brook, longtime Professor of Physics and Professor Emeritus at New Mexico Tech, passed away on Tuesday, September 3, 2002, while in the hospital following emergency abdominal surgery.

(by Paul Krehbiel)

Marx received his B.Sc. degree in physics from the University of New Mexico in 1944, where he was a student of Robert Holzer and E.J. Workman. He did his graduate studies at UCLA, where he received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in 1949 and 1953, respectively. After a brief stint as a research geophysicist at UCLA's Institute of Geophysics, Marx joined the Physics Department at New Mexico Tech in 1954. This was at the invitation of Dr. Workman, who became president of Tech in 1945.

Upon coming to Tech, Marx began his long and distinguished career as a lightning and thunderstorm researcher. In his early work, Marx collaborated with Tech scientist Steve Reynolds on laboratory studies of hail-based thunderstorm charging processes, observational studies of the onset of electrification in storms, and field studies of the sources of electric charge during cloud-to-ground (CG) and intracloud (IC) lightning flashes. Marx also made high quality time-resolved photographic measurements of CG lightning discharges with specially designed moving film cameras. In 1957, Marx began a series of highly fruitful collaborations with a number of Japanese scientists, first with Nobu Kitagawa, then Toshio Ogawa, Misumi Takagi, and later Minoru Nakano. These studies produced continuous, high speed measurements of lightning electric field changes that shed considerable light on the in-cloud processes of both CG and IC flashes. Again, the measurements were obtained using special moving film cameras, in this case to capture complete sequences of oscilloscope traces. Instrumentation magnetic tape recorders (much less digital oscilloscopes) were not yet available.

Marx further established the tradition started at Tech by Jack Workman and colleagues of being a consummate experimentalist, observationalist, and builder of research equipment. He had a long-time interest in the use of radar for studying thunderstorms and some novel ideas about how to do this. His many and varied research projects thus included the construction and development of a fast-scanning surveillance radar (the "red ball" radar) that utilized noise transmissions to speed up the radar reflectivity measurements of storms, for which he received a U.S. patent in 1976. The fast-scanning radar was used as part of an NSF-sponsored study lightning and thunderstorms over Kennedy Space Center during the Thunderstorm Research International Program (TRIP) during the summers of 1976-1978, in collaboration with Roger Lhermitte of the University of Miami. Also starting in the 1970s he oversaw the development of a larger, wideband noise and dual-polarization radar that has continued to be a state-of-the-art research platform to this day.

Marx Brook showing Dave Raymond one of his `slow antennas' for lightning electric field change measurements, circa 1976.

In addition to his early lightning studies, Marx made measurements of positive CG lightning during two winter seasons in Japan during 1976 and 1977. He continued these and related observations in conjunction with his long-time colleagues Bernard Vonnegut and Richard Orville at the State University of New York in Albany, and during the Convective and Precipitation Electrification study (CaPE) held at Kennedy Space Center in 1991. Marx's involvement in studies at Kennedy Space Center dated back to 1970 when he and Tech colleagues C.B. Moore and Charles Holmes conducted a study of the November 1969 Apollo 12 lightning incident, in which the Apollo moon rocket triggered a lightning discharge shortly after being launched into an electrified cloud. Later, in 1973, Marx collaborated with Charlie Moore and T. Sigurgeirsson in a study of lightning during the Heimay Island volcanic eruption off the southern coast of Iceland.

Marx was promoted to professor of physics in 1960 and was chairman of Tech's Physics Department from 1968-1978. In 1978, he became Director of the Research and Development Division at Tech, remaining in that position until his retirement in 1986. In 1983, Marx was instrumental in establishing the Center for Explosives Technology Research (CETR) and recruiting its internationally known director, Per-Anders Persson. CETR was one of several centers of excellence started in New Mexico under an act of the State Legislature and was subsequently combined with Tech's TERA group to become the current Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center (EMRTC).

Marx was named the 32nd John Wesley Powell lecturer of the AAAS (1965), was a Visiting Scientist at the Cavendish Laboratory in the U.K. (1968-1969), and was a visiting lecturer for the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (1976). He received the Distinguished Scientist Award of the New Mexico Academy of Science (1978) and the New Mexico Tech Distinguished Researcher Award in 1986. He was elected as a Fellow of the AAAS (1959), the American Physical Society (1962), the American Meteorological Society (1981), and the American Geophysical Union (1983). In 1965, Marx became chairman of the newly enacted New Mexico Weather Control and Cloud Modification Commission, accompanied by Charles Holmes of Tech and Jack Reed of Sandia National Laboratories as charter members of the Commission. Marx also served on the New Mexico Governor's Committee on Technical Excellence from 1982-1983 and as a member of the Technical Advisory Committee of the New Mexico Energy Institute from 1983-1986. He authored over seventy publications in refereed journals and books, and was awarded several patents on meteorological radar and air quality devices.

Of the various awards and honors that Marx received, the one that he was most proud of was the Lifetime Achievement Award that was presented to him, Charlie Moore, and Bernie Vonnegut in December 1993 by the atmospheric electricity community at the Fall AGU Meeting that year. The three colleagues were honored, according to the citation:

"in recognition of a half-century of outstanding research in the study of electrical phenomena in the atmosphere, for extensive contributions to the education and mentoring of students, for the profound influence you have had on so many of our careers and lives, and lastly, for the selfless cooperation and assistance extended to fellow researchers worldwide."

The plaque was signed by 120 colleagues and friends.

Marx at home with his data analysis computers, summer 2002, during a visit by his UCLA graduate school colleagues Stan Ruttenburg and Clay Seamans.

In his `retirement,' Marx continued to be an active researcher, making high-quality measurements of lightning sferics for NASA and in support of research studies with his colleagues at Tech, and working to develop additional meteorological radars. At the same time, he continued his lifelong hobbies of woodworking and photography. Marx was also a musician, being most notably quite handy with the mandolin. In the summer of 1980 Marx had taken Rit Carbone on a European odyssey in search of the twin of a mandolin that Marx had bought many years earlier. They didn't find the mandolin, but Rit was highly impressed by Marx's determination to do so. Marx was as accomplished at his hobbies as he was at his research and most recently had been devoting himself to converting his slide collections into electronic format using his extensive home computer system.

Marx was born on July 12, 1920 in New York City. He is survived by his wife of 55 years, Dorothy, and by children Janet, Jim, Georgia, and their families. Persons wishing to make a memorial contribution may do so by donating to the Esther and Abraham Brook Award Fund, established at Tech by Marx in memory of his parents, c/o Office for Advancement, New Mexico Tech, 801 Leroy Place, Socorro, NM 87801.