Retired Duke Physics Professor and Administrator Dies

Harold W. Lewis, a Duke University distinguished service professor emeritus who occupied two different dean's posts as well as serving as vice provost and physics department chairman prior to his 1986 retirement, died of cancer Monday at the age of 83. A native of Keene, N.H., Lewis first went to Duke in 1940 as a teaching fellow in physics after receiving his bachelor's degree from Middlebury College in Vermont and his master's from the University of Buffalo. As World War II began, he joined the Naval Ordinance Laboratory and Navy Bureau of Ordinance as an expert on magnetic fields and mine detection, dividing his time between Washington and Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. In 1946, he returned to Duke as a visiting instructor, and then as a research associate, before being appointed an assistant professor in 1949. He received his Ph.D in physics from Duke in 1950, the year he also became assistant project leader for the university's Nuclear Physics Program. He became a full professor in 1959, and in 1960-61, served as visiting professor at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon under a Smith-Mundt Fellowship. In 1961, he was appointed associate director of Duke's Nuclear Structure Laboratory, which later became the Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory. That same year he became the department of physics chairman pro tem. In 1963, he entered the university's upper administrative ranks when he began six years as vice provost and dean of arts and sciences. From 1969-80, he was vice provost and dean of faculty. Named a university distinguished service professor in 1980, he was appointed chairman of the department of physics in 1981, a position he held until his retirement in 1986. He was a fellow of the American Physical Society and vice chairman of the society's Southeastern section in 1959-60. He was also a member of the American Association of Physics Teachers and of Sigma Xi. Lewis is survived by his wife, Mary, of Durham; a daughter, Barbara, of Seattle, Wash.; a son, Richard, of Troy, N.H.; and two grandsons. The family is inviting friends and colleagues to gather from 4-7 p.m. Friday at his home, and suggests that donations be made, in lieu of flowers, to Duke's Comprehensive Cancer Center.