Leon's Memorial Service

Leon's Memorial Service at the Science Center, Harvard University

February 8, 2003

- Martin Zombeck

I first met Leon almost 50 years ago when we both entered MIT as physics majors. We pledged to the Delta Upsilon social fraternity at MIT in the fall of 1953 along with a dozen other young men. We came from California, Connecticut, Georgia, New Jersey, New York, Texas, Ohio, Virginia, and Kansas. Many of us returned to the Boston area after graduation and a few years elsewhere for graduate education and permanent careers. We have all, both near and far, kept in touch over five decades and now this memorial occasion has brought us together again. Several of these classmates are here today.

Back at MIT we knew Leon as Leon Paul Vann. When we found out that his name had been shortened from Van Speybroeck, we nicknamed him "Duke". The nickname stuck for the four years that we all lived together at the fraternity house on Beacon Street. I'm not sure that he liked it but that didn't stop us from using it. There is a photo in the class yearbook captioned "Duke's harem". It shows Erin and four of her Wellesley classmates. Two married Leon's fraternity brothers.

It wasn't all study at the fraternity house.

I won't go into the details of the time we were all loaded into paddy wagons by the Boston Tactical Police Force one balmy, spring evening after almost hitting a Boston judge with a balloon filled with water. We were only letting off steam during MIT's annual Spring Riots. MIT's Dean of Students showed up at 2 am at the Boylston Street police station to bail us all out. We had the dubious honor of making the front page of the Record American, the forerunner of the Boston Herald, and had to lie low for the rest of the semester until our court appearance. There was a nice photo of Leon in one of the holding cells. Of course, now we would call this a male bonding experience rather than a riot.

Here's how the newspaper described the court appearance:

A wild "water bomb" battle between 600 college students in the Back Bay was to have its sequel today in Roxbury District Court, where 60 boys were charged with disturbing the peace - before a judge who narrowly missed being doused by the fray.
The fracas threw the Beacon St.- Bay State Rd "Fraternity Row" district into tumult, and numerous co-eds from nearby Boston University dormitories gleefully shouted encouragement to the police.
Those arrested included mostly MIT students but some boys from BU were snagged.

When we were seniors an encyclopedia salesman showed up at the fraternity front door and asked to meet with all those over 21. Luckily I was underage. He did a dazzling presentation of why we needed encyclopedias. None of us was flush with money, but five or six, including Leon, signed contracts for sets. A few days later, a few backed out, but not Leon. Weeks later Leon's parents received a full set on their front porch in Kansas. Leon did not think that it made a pretty picture.

I clearly remember walking across the Harvard Bridge with Leon after our last three hour physics' exam just before graduation. Leon was carrying a couple of text books and all of a sudden in a mild fury, he flung them into the Charles River. MIT had that effect on a person. Needless to say, he got an A on the exam and didn't leave the field.

Leon had a brief military career. While an undergraduate at MIT he was enrolled in the Army ROTC program. Upon graduation he was commissioned as a 2nd lieutenant in the Signal Corps. I think that experience converted him into a liberal.

After his brief stint in the Army, he returned to MIT and received his Ph.D. in High Energy Physics in 1965. His thesis title: "Elastic electron-deuteron scattering at high momentum transfer". His thesis advisor was Henry Kendall, who shared the 1990 Noble prize in physics with Jerry Friedman of MIT and Richard Taylor of Stanford University. Their experiments in the late '60s and early '70s on the scattering of high energy electrons by protons and deuterons provided the first evidence for quarks, for which they were awarded the prize. Leon was a coauthor with Friedman, Kendall and others on a paper with the same experimental subject in 1969.

In the late 60's, I was still in graduate school and Leon had been working for a research firm in Boston. He was not very happy. He gave me a call and asked me if I had any employment ideas for him. I had been working summers at American Science and Engineering for Frank Paolini and then for John Waters. I suggested that he try American Science & Engineering. The rest is history.

Leon could be frustrating at times. He was often seen covering sheets of paper with barely decipherable mathematical expressions in an attempt to solve a particularly knotty problem. After a few weeks of this he would announce that the problem was solved and that the solution was obvious.

Leon had the ability to cut to the core of any problem. One of us was trying to decide where to go to graduate school. The choice was between Illinois or California. Leon asked, "Would you like to spend the next four or five years in Urbana or Berkeley?" The answer became obvious.

Leon, we will miss you.

Thank you.