Stirling Auchincloss Colgate Nov. 14, 1925 – Dec. 1, 2023

By SHARON SNYDER
Los Alamos

Stirling Auchincloss Colgate (Los Alamos Ranch School 1940–1943) was born in New York City and died in 2013 in Los Alamos, NM.

Stirling Colgate was one of the last four graduates of Los Alamos Ranch School, along with his classmates William “Bee” Barr, Theodore “Ted” Church, and Collier Baird. Intensified studies allowed them to graduate on Jan. 28, 1943, and enter colleges at mid-year.

Stirling went to Cornell University, where he eventually earned a degree in electrical engineering, though his studies were interrupted by enlistment in the Merchant Marines during WWII. Discharged in 1946, he continued his education, including his PhD in nuclear physics from Cornell in 1951. He then became a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley.

From 1952–1965, Stirling was involved in diagnostic testing of nuclear weapons at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. In 1965, he became president of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, moving on in 1976 to Los Alamos National Laboratory to work in the Theoretical Division. Stirling was a Senior Laboratory Fellow and a Laboratory Associate Fellow in Nuclear and Particle Physics, Astrophysics, and Cosmology. In 1985, he was elected to the National Academy of Science and received the Rossi prize for work in astrophysics in 1990.

Upon the announcement of Stirling Colgate’s death, LANL Director Charlie McMillan commented, “His contributions to physics and national security science, including some very recent work, are broad, deep, and exceptionally creative.”