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Steve Belford
Sport climber
Poway, CA
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Keith was a cool guy. I would see him at Woodson in the early 80’s when I first discovered climbing. I met Keith during one of our first few trips to Woodson. He gave me one of those little red Mt. Woodson guidebooks that he made. That was a real stoker for me. I did not know that there was a guidebook for that area. I think that was my actually my first guidebook.
Those were some good times. I am sure that I had machine nuts with webbing threaded through them on my meager rack back then. Thankfully we survived those early years of climbing.
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neebee
Social climber
calif/texas
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hey there say, charlotte... thank you for sharing your heart, as to your dad...
i am not a climber, but i love the greatoutdoors and whenever we got to yosemite, it was a treasure, to me and my brothers and family...
i learn so very much about climber adventures here and the men and woman folks, that make the find, or make, the routes or open paths for others, to love them as they did/and do...
thank you for sharing,about your dad's bit of history, so those that knew him, and me, as well, can appreciate him even deeper...
god bless and condolences, at this sad time of losing and missing him...
ps: i love the sad card, part--waiting for the climb-weather to open, and
i greatly loved the physicist part, and the love to solve problems on the rock/climb--just loved it!
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dee ee
Mountain climber
citizen of planet Earth
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Oct 11, 2014 - 09:22am PT
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Keith was all over the crags in the '70's and '80's and always friendly. I used to see him with Mike Paul regularly.
I'm sorry to hear of his passing.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Keith Brueckner
preparing for an invited talk at the APS "April" meeting (that took place this year in late January in Washington DC, just last weekend) I was reviewing the history of Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) and ran across Keith Brueckner.
Brueckner had a rather far reaching career as a physicist. He was trained in theoretical physics, his Ph.D. advisor was Robert Serber at UC Berkeley in 1950, his thesis title: "Production of mesons by photons and nucleons."
Robert Serber was Oppenheimer's assistant at UCB prior to the Manhattan project, and a theorist in the Theory division at Los Alamos during the Manhattan project. I knew him briefly at Columbia U. when I was a student there. I mention that because Brueckner becomes engaged in inertial confinement fusion during his position as Vice President and Director of Research at the Institute for Defense Analyses, 1961-1962.
When the laser "discovery" was announced in July 1960, it occurred to many people working in fusion that it might be applicable as the radiation drive for inducing fusion in tiny pellets of deuterium-tritium fuel. The only problem was that the lasers had to be developed in power in order to be effective. This was of great interest to the USG, and particularly the services in the DOD, and Bruekner was the guy that heard the proposals from the "Radiation Laboratory" (later Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) to embark on a program of laser R&D specifically for ICF.
Also during that same period, Brueckner was hired at the new UC San Diego and was a founding member of the physics faculty, and an important factor in building that faculty into an excellent department.
He remained engaged in the laser development, and from 1968-1970 was the Vice President and Technical Director of KMS Industries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KMS_Fusion
transcripts of an interview with him regarding this part of his career can be read following this link:
http://www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/30599
He left KMS in 1974 and went on to other activities.
In physics he is known for work that came out of a collaboration with Murray Gell-Mann while they were associated with the RAND Corporation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_phase_approximation
http://authors.library.caltech.edu/3713/1/GELpr57b.pdf
It was noted in his obituaries that he was an avid rock climber... but it seems that his work as a physicist was largely unknown to those he climbed with...
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TomKimbrough
Social climber
Salt Lake City
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I will bet it was not unknown to Beck.
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Kalimon
Social climber
Ridgway, CO
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Thank you Ed for shining some additional light on this man's achievements . . . what an interesting fellow.
I spent my formative years in the Valley of the "Rad Lab", probably met you at Sunrise too.
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Eric Beck
Sport climber
Bishop, California
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Ed referred briefly to Keith's work on an early fusion project. He was the project director at the KMS laboratory in Ann Arbor. The idea was to confine deuterium in little glass bubbles and then zap it with a high powered laser. He also expressed the opinion that fusion will never reach break even in energy production.
Not mentioned here is Keith's swimming. He once offhandedly referred to a period when he was training for the nationals.
For a while he had a french girlfriend who was a superb cook.
Once several of us were hiking to a climb in Joshua Tree. Our group included a dog. I mentioned that I had heard that dogs like to be in the front of a group regardless of whether their human was up front. Keith was curious and proposed an experiment.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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I followed KMS with great interest at the time as a layperson, had no idea a climber or such a renowned physicist was involved. Sounds like he was a prodigiously productive human being on all fronts.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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You could tell he was really smart. I can hear his voice almost perfectly in my memory video. Wow, 90! Good for Keith!
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Gnome Ofthe Diabase
climber
Out Of Bed
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Feb 12, 2017 - 03:39pm PT
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That's the résumé !
A list of a great man's achievement (s)!
Hey ,
Thanx Ed H! ( did we miss your birthday? Have a happy!)
And thnx again KB's scientific contributions helped change our world.
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