David N. Schramm 1945-1997
Credit:
University of Chicago
David N. Schramm effectively combined the very big with the very small.
Among his many scientific achievements,
Schramm and collaborators successfully used
Big Bang cosmology to
predict that only three families of elementary particles exist in the universe,
which was subsequently confirmed by
high energy particle accelerators.
Schramm and collaborators realized that
current relative elemental abundance measurements,
when combined with nuclear reaction rates,
constrain the amount of normal matter to be much
less than that implied by the movements of stars and galaxies.
Therefore, most of the universe might be made of some sort
of dark matter.
Schramm was a champion wrestler, a mountain climber,
an inspiration to scientists and students,
and was alone piloting a plane when it crashed last Friday.