Tributes

George Landis Zimmerman, Emeritus professor of Chemistry, Bryn Mawr College, died on October 21st 2009 at his home in Bryn Mawr at the age of 89. He was born on August 27, 1920 to Dr. Jacob Landis Zimmerman and concert pianist Louise Marsh Zimmerman in Hershey, Pennsylvania. He grew up in Harrisburg. He attended McDonough School in Maryland, and Swarthmore College (’41) where he graduated with honors and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi. While a graduate student at Harvard University, he was recruited by Bill Libby to join the Manhattan Project at Columbia University, during the Second World War. There he participated in developing a methodology for enriching and purifying Uranium isotopes for the first Atomic Bomb. After the war, he completed his doctorate in Physical Chemistry at the University of Chicago (’48) under Nobel laureate James Franck. Subsequently he taught Physical Chemistry at M.I.T. for two years and then at Bryn Mawr College for over forty years. He was a Guggenheim Fellow (1965-66) at Oxford and University College London, where he focused on Theoretical Chemistry of Molecular Quantum Mechanics. During his tenure at Bryn Mawr, he taught rigorous undergraduate and graduate courses and oversaw research programs, notably the various molecular spectroscopic determination and elucidation of the mechanism of photochemical isomerization of chemical dye compounds. He also made theoretical calculation of excitation energy levels of a transition metal Ruthenium ion. At times, he served as department chair. He played classical and jazz music on the clarinet and was an aficionado of Johann Sebastian Bach. He accumulated an extensive collection of hitherto unpublished Renaissance and early Baroque music which he transcribed for chamber ensemble playing with his friends. He was also responsible for introducing Morris dancing (a form of pre-Christian English folk dancing) at Bryn Mawr College. He sang bass in the Church of the Redeemer choir, and was a member at the Merion Cricket Club in Haverford and the Buck’s Harbor Yacht Club in Brookville, Maine. He is survived by his wife of 51 years, Un-Jin Paik, and four children, Landis, Emily, and David Zimmerman, and Louise Hoehl, and three grandchildren, Grace and Charlotte Zimmerman and Karl Hoehl. Memorial services will be held at the Parish House Assembly Room of the Church of the Redeemer, at the corner of Pennswood and New Gulph Roads. Bryn Mawr, 610 525-2486, on Monday October 26th 2009 , 11:00 a.m. The memorial service will be followed by interment in the churchyard and a reception in the Parish House.

Tributes

George Landis Zimmerman

August 27, 1920 - October 21, 2009