Conyers Herring
1915-July 23, 2009
Palo Alto, California

Conyers Herring, 94, a resident of Palo Alto, died July 23.

He grew up in Parsons, Kan., and obtained a bachelor's degree in astronomy from the University of Kansas and a doctorate in physics from Princeton University. He became a professor of applied physics at Stanford University, specializing in the field of materials science. After teaching physics at the University of Missouri from 1940 to 1941 and applied mathematics at the University of Texas in 1946, he joined the technical staff of Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. He became a professor at Stanford University in 1978 and won the Wolf Prize in Physics in 1984 for discovering methods to calculate the energy levels of electrons.

He received several awards for his research in physics. He received the Oliver E. Buckley solid-state Physics Prize from the American Physical Society in 1959 and the National Academy of Sciences 1980 James Murray Luck Award for Excellence in Scientific Reviewing. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was also a member of the American Physical Society, the American Society for Information Science and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

He is survived by his wife of 62 years, Louise; his sons Alan, Brian and Gordon; and his daughter, Lois.

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