Obituaries

Here are obituaries published around the world on Alivin Tollestrup


Alvin Tollestrup, National Medal of Technology winner, dies at age 95
Fermilab News, Feb. 11, 2020, by Steve Koppes

“Fermilab has lost one of its giants. Award-winning engineer and physicist Alvin Tollestrup, who played an instrumental role in developing the Tevatron as the world’s leading high-energy physics accelerator at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and founding member of the Collider Detector at Fermilab collaboration, died on Feb. 9 of cancer. He was 95.


Remembering a visionary physicist
CERN Courier, March 26, 2020, by George Zweig

© 2020 by George Zweig.  Posted with permission of the author.

“Alvin Tollestrup, who passed away on 9 February at the age of 95, was a visionary. I joined his group at Caltech in 1960. Alvin had helped build Caltech’s electron synchrotron, the highest energy photon-producing accelerator at the time. But he thought more exciting physics could be performed elsewhere, and managed to get approval to run an experiment at Berkeley Lab’s Bevatron to measure a rare decay mode of the K+ meson.”


Alvin Virgil Tollestrup
From Physics Today, June 2020, by Chris Quigg and Mel Shochet

“Alvin Virgil Tollestrup, a key figure in the development of Fermilab, notably the creation of the Tevatron, succumbed to cancer on 9 February 2020 in Warrenville, Illinois. Born on 22 March 1924 in Los Angeles, Alvin moved with his family when he was six to Logan, Utah, where his grandfather’s position as a psychology professor helped them weather the Depression.”
There young Alvin had a basement laboratory with a chemistry set and electronic components.