Herbert M. Fried (FAC)

Herbert M. Fried, of Cranston, R.I.; Nov. 18, 2023. He was professor emeritus of physics. He graduated from Brooklyn College and was attending UConn when his studies were interrupted by the Korean War. Following two years in the U.S. Army, he completed his physics studies at Stanford University. He spent a postdoctoral year at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, three years teaching physics at UCLA, a year as a visiting member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, and two years as visiting physicist at the Courant Institute at NYU. In 1964 he joined the physics faculty at Brown. Despite retiring in 1997, he continued to teach, advise graduate students, and perform research for years afterwards. A specialist in functional methods developed by Julian Schwinger and others, he authored four books and more than 140 scientific papers. He personally knew many physics luminaries, including Robert Oppenheimer and Freeman Dyson. He lectured and performed research in university departments and institutes throughout the world and for many years was director of the workshops on non-perturbative quantum chromodynamics at the American University of Paris and La Citadelle of Villefranche-sur-Mer. He continued active research throughout his life, completing his fourth book in 2014 at age 84, and publishing scientific papers well into his 90s. He spent sabbatical years living in Paris, Nice, and Villefranche-sur-Mer with his family. He was active in Brown’s study abroad program at the American University of Paris and was a tireless advocate of foreign language study as a means of expanding horizons. Among his closest collaborators were French physicists Yves Gabellini and Thierry Grandou. He was a self-taught painter of numerous portraits and landscapes. A sunrise he painted in Kyoto was displayed at the Kyoto Institute of Theoretical Physics. He was also an avid reader of mysteries and spy novels. He could recite from memory poems by Robert Service and Lewis Carroll, and was always more than willing to give an audience an entertaining performance, especially his comedy routine impersonating the fictional Josiah S. Carberry. For more than 30 years, he and his wife Nancy, who survives him, were active members of the First Unitarian Church in Providence and regular attendees of the Institute for Religion in an Age of Science (IRAS) on Star Island. In addition to his wife, he is survived by a daughter; sons Jonathan ’81 and William ’01; a daughter-in-law; two granddaughters; and a sister.