Edward Von Halle, age 87 and an internationally known scientist, died peacefully in his sleep at his Oak Ridge home on July 5. He was active in the Oak Ridge community as well as a devoted husband and father.

Ed was born on June 30, 1926, in Brooklyn, N.Y., and spent his earliest years there. He won the Westinghouse Prize in high school and went on to study chemical engineering at Carnegie Institute of Technology. When war broke out, Ed was too young to volunteer and had to wait until 1944 to enlist. Ed was on the docks in California ready to be part of the mainland invasion of Japan when news of the atomic bomb brought the war to an end.

After the military, Ed returned to Carnegie Tech and completed his degree. Ed went on in later years to get his master’s degree from Bucknell in Lewisburg, Pa., and his doctorate from the University of Tennessee, all in chemical engineering.

In 1950, Ed moved to Oak Ridge, to work at K-25. In 1952, he married Elizabeth Sgourakis and started a family.

Ed Von Halle was an internationally renowned expert in the theory of isotope separation. His Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Tennessee was on the subject of separation of species by thermal diffusion, and his later contributions covered isotope separation by gaseous diffusion, gas centrifuge, and laser methods. [Read more…]