Willy Haeberli

Willy Haeberli, World-renowned Nuclear Physicist,

Dies October 4, 2021

MEMORIAL SERVICE UPDATE: A memorial service will be held for Willy on Saturday, June 18, 2022 at the First Unitarian Society, 900 University Bay Drive, Madison, WI 53705, in the Landmark Auditorium. The service will begin at 1:00 pm with a reception following.

Professor Emeritus Willy Haeberli, one of the world’s preeminent nuclear physicists, died at his home in Madison, Wisconsin on October 4th, 2021. He was 96.

A professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Willy Haeberli pioneered studies of the interactions of beams of polarized particles with targets to better understand the detailed nuclear structure of matter. He was instrumental in the early development and advancement of polarized ion-sources used in such experiments. He and his team helped develop, install, and troubleshoot polarized ion sources all around the world.

Born in 1925 in Zurich, Switzerland, to Paul and Clara Haeberli, Professor Haeberli grew up mostly in Basel, and was educated at the University of Basel. He also served in the Swiss Army as a radio operator late in World War II.

In 1952, he accepted a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He moved as an assistant professor to Duke University in 1954, and finally settled back at UW-Madison as a faculty member in 1956, where he remained until his retirement in 2006.

Willy Haeberli’s work as a physicist was widely recognized. In 1979, he was awarded the T.W. Bonner Prize by the American Physical Society. The prize citation reads: “To recognize outstanding experimental research in nuclear physics, including the development of a method, technique, or device that significantly contributes to nuclear physics research,” specifically, “For their unusual contributions to the development and use of ion sources for charged particle accelerators in both basic physics and applied fields.” In 1988, Haeberli was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2002 he was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). Professor Haeberli was also twice appointed to a Humboldt Research Fellowship in Germany, one of the many countries where he conducted and led research programs.

“Haeberli gained international distinction for his sixty years of nuclear spin-physics research,” said University of North Carolina professor emeritus, Thomas Clegg. “Much of our discipline’s scientific progress was built on Haeberli’s fundamental ideas and pioneering development of polarized beams and targets.”

Professor Haeberli also conducted research at prominent centers in the US and internationally, including the Max Planck institute in Heidelberg, the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland, the University of Indiana, the German Electron Synchrotron in Hamburg in Germany, and Brookhaven National Labs.

To complement his distinguished career as a scientist, Haeberli was a prolific educator, guiding some forty students to their doctoral theses, as well as more than a dozen students in post-doctoral research.

Haeberli was also well known at UW-Madison as a teacher of undergraduate students. He immensely enjoyed translating complex ideas into concepts his students in elementary physics could understand. He developed the highly popular “Physics in the Arts” course for undergraduates in the liberal arts, in collaboration with the late Professor Ugo Camerini, and later with Professor Pupa Gilbert, who has carried on teaching it at UW-Madison. Professors Haeberli and Gilbert co-authored the first two editions of the widely-used textbook of the same name.

In 1954, Willy married Heidi Haeberli (also from Basel) and together they had three children, Martin, Paul and Frances. His children enjoyed their dad’s fervent passion for cooking and entertaining, hiking, sailing, canoeing and family picnics which often included physics colleagues and students. As a father and grandfather, Willy was always challenging his offspring to physics and science questions, particularly at the dinner table, and he enjoyed collaborating with family on puzzles, Ken-Ken and Rummikub games. Throughout his life he loved telling stories and jokes.

Willy later married his second wife, Gabriele S. Haberland in 1992. As a couple, Gabriele and Willy were art collectors and patrons of the arts in Madison, particularly the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, the Chazen Museum and Tandem Press.

After Gabriele’s death in 2017, Professor Willy Haeberli honored her by establishing the Gabriele Haberland Permanent Collection Fund at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (MMoCA) to support exhibitions, publications, research, and conservation, by funding the Tandem Press Gabriele S. Haberland Printmaking Technology Center, and in 2020, by providing a scholarship for graduate students in printmaking for the next five years. Additionally, Haeberli made regular gifts to the annual Tandem Press Art and Wine Auction, and created two travel awards to be granted annually in Gabriele's name for graduate students in printmaking at the UW-Madison Art Department.

Haeberli is survived by his older sister, Edith Hess; his son, Martin Haeberli (m. Tracey Grown); their daughters Serena and Eden Grown-Haeberli; his son, Paul Haeberli; and his daughter Francie Haeberli (partner, Lewis Gilbert), and her sons Camryn and Dominick Boyle.

A memorial service is scheduled for Saturday, June 18th, 2022 in Madison.

The family recommends donations in Willy Haeberli’s name be sent to Tandem Press, Chazen Museum, MMoCA, or organizations for mental health or suicide prevention.