Deaths Deaths (July 14, 2004)

Marjorie Brown Liebes

Marjorie Brown Liebes, 100, a resident of Portola Valley, died June 25.

A native of San Francisco, she graduated from Girl's High School and attended Mills College.

She kept a small farm in Hillsborough during World War II where she raised chickens and a Guernsey cow to feed her family. She survived the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

She is survived by her son, Sidney; son, Stephan; six grandchildren; 11 great-grandchildren; niece, Ruth Shavel; and nephew, Lloyd. Services have not yet been scheduled.

Donations in her honor may be made to NCPHS Foundation for the Sequoias Portola Valley Health Center Project, 1525 Post St., San Francisco, CA 94109; or to a charity of choice.

Natalie Pearson

Natalie Nichols Pearson, 83, a former 40-year resident of Palo Alto, died June 2 in McMinnville, Ore.

Born in Chicago, Ill., she was raised in East Lansing, Mich., and Great Neck, N.Y., where she graduated from Great Neck High School as the first female senior class president in 1938. She graduated from the College of William and Mary, where she was an economics major and member of the Alpha Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, the Honor Council and Student Council.

She was a member of the Palo Alto Newcomers Club, Palo Alto Alumni Association of Pi Beta Phi and AAUW. She worked for the Palo Alto Unified School District in the mathematics departments of Terman Junior High School and Cubberley Senior High School. She moved to McMinnville, Ore., in 1994.

She enjoyed family camping trips to state and national parks and spending time on the coast in California and Oregon.

She is survived by her daughters, Susan Pearson of Sunnyvale and Randy Pearson Van Dam of Haworth, N.J.; son, John "Jay" Frank Pearson IV of McMinnville, Ore.; brother, George W. Nichols of Allentown, Penn.; and six grandchildren. Services have been held.

William Spicer

William E. Spicer, a celebrated inventor and mentor who taught at Stanford for more than 40 years and co-founded the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (SSRL), died of heart failure while vacationing in London on June 6. He was 74.

Best known for the development of photoemission spectroscopy, he pioneered image-intensification technology. His biggest commercial successes were medical imaging devices and military night-vision goggles.

"The breadth and depth of his contributions (are) perhaps indicated in part by the fact that his work created opportunities for Ph.D. students in physics, applied physics, (electrical engineering) and materials science, and at SLAC (the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center)," said research professor James Gibbons. "The work itself was of a consistently high standard and was mentioned at one stage as being of Nobel-prize quality."

Born Sept. 7, 1929, in Baton Rouge, La., he overcame a poor boyhood school system, dyslexia and a speech defect to earn a bachelor's degree in physics in 1949 from the College of William and Mary, where he was elected Phi Beta Kappa at the age of 19. He earned a second bachelor's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1951 and master's and doctoral degrees from the University of Missouri in 1953 and 1955, respectively.

A contributor to more than 700 publications and one of the 50 most-cited authors between 1982 and 1997, he was an expert in the electronic structure of solids with emphasis on surfaces and interfaces, and on synchrotron radiation photoemission studies of semiconductors.

From 1955 to 1962, he worked at RCA Research Laboratories in Princeton, N.J., developing a fundamental understanding of the physics of photocathodes -- major components of image intensifiers.

As consultant to Varian, he invented an improved X-ray image intensifier used in medical devices worldwide. The intensifier increased image brightness by a factor of 10,000, allowing objects such as kidney stones to be seen for the first time. The device also allowed doctors to observe the televised X-ray images of the human body in real time; to examine, for example, blood vessels in the heart prior to bypass operations.

He came to Stanford in 1962 to help build a solid state physics program in the Electrical Engineering Department. He was also a faculty member in the departments of materials sciences, engineering and applied physics.

He served as acting director, deputy director and consulting director of the resulting Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Project, which was named the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory in 1977.

In 1978, he became the Stanford W. Ascherman Professor of Engineering, and was a mentor to more than 100 doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows..

A frequent advisor to government and industry, he was a member of AAAS and a fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. In 1980, he won the Oliver E. Buckley Solid State Physics Prize from the APS.

In 1981, Industrial Research and Development magazine chose him as Scientist of the Year. In 1984, the American Vacuum Society gave him its senior research prize, the Medard W. Welch Award.

He became an emeritus professor in 1992, but remained active in his research until his death.

His hobbies included tennis and military and postal history.

In addition to his wife, Diane, he is survived by daughters Sally Spicer of Mountain View and Jakki Spicer of Minneapolis, as well as by two grandchildren. Spicer's son, William Spicer, Jr., died in 2000.

Donations may be made to the William E. Spicer Award, SSRL, c/o Dave Dungan, SLAC MS69, 2575 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park, CA 94028. Make checks payable to Stanford University with "W.E. Spicer Award/SSRL" on the memo line.

Services have been held.

Kenneth Wickham

Kenneth Gregory Wickham, 91, a 33-year resident of Los Altos, died June 21.

A native of Missouri, he was a retired U.S. Army Major General and World War II veteran. He graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1938 and received a master's degree in International Affairs from George Washington University in 1963.

He was a member of the Board of Directors of the U.S. Olympic Committee and served as president of the International Military Sports Council of 40 nations in 1969.

In Los Altos he was a member of The Fellowship Forum, American Legion and Peninsula Retired Officers Club.

He is survived by his wife, Norma; daughter, Mary; two grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Services have been held.

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