Francis J. “Buzz” Muckenthaler, age 90, of Oak Ridge, died Sunday, May 12, at Tennova Inpatient Hospice in Knoxville.

He was born April 3, 1923, in Paxico, Kansas, the son of Raymond and Cecelia Meinhardt Muckenthaler.

He served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps from 1943 to 1946, after which he graduated from Rockhurst University and received a master’s degree in physics from the University of Kansas in 1949. That same year, he began employment with Fairchild Engine and Airplane Corporation in Oak Ridge. He transferred in 1951 to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, from which he retired in 1993.

As a physicist, his research provided experimental data for the design and development of shielding systems for nuclear reactors. For this, he was honored for technical achievement by the American Nuclear Society. [Read more…]