Nobel Prize winner who cracked the superconductivity code dies
Former Eustis resident John Robert “Bob” Schrieffer, who rose to the top of the scientific world when he won the 1972 Nobel Prize for physics but later spent time in prison for causing a fatal vehicle crash in California, died Saturday in Tallahassee. He was 88. Schrieffer helped develop the theory of superconductivity, “which today powers super trains, computer chips and so many other parts of our personal and business lives,” according to his obituary.
In 1985, he was invited to the White House, where President Ronald Reagan presented him the with President’s National Medal of Science. Schrieffer also won “numerous other awards that he would not want to brag about,” his obituary reads.
Schrieffer was born in Oak Park, Ill. His family moved to Manhasset, N.Y., in 1940 and then seven years later to Eustis, where his father became a co-founders of the Golden Gem citrus coop.
He graduated from Eustis High School in 1949, then graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He went to graduate school at the University of Illinois.
Schrieffer helped with discovering the theory of superconductivity, which is viewed as “one of the most useful tools for science to explain a variety of events in fields as diverse as astrophysics and brain research,” according to a 2005 Sentinel article.
His obituary says he had “an incredible zest for life, a sense of humor, self depreciation and dedication for treating everyone equally. He was the same with world leaders and service people.”
From 1980 to ’91 he taught at the University of California, Santa Barbara, before relocating to Tallahassee to take a job as chief scientist for the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at Florida State University.
“Bob Schrieffer was one of the great scientific minds of our times,” lab Director Greg Boebinger said in an obituary on nationalmaglab.org.
But his life took a sharp turn in September 2004. California authorities charged him in a crash that killed a man and injured seven others when his MercedesBenz rear-ended a van while going more than 100 mph as he drove from San Francisco to Santa Barbara.
Schrieffer, who was behind the wheel even though his Florida drivers license had been suspended due to a rash of speeding tickets, was sentenced in November 2005 to two years in prison.
His wife, Anne, died in 2013. He is survived by three children and two grandchildren.
Hamlin & Hilbish Funeral Directors in Eustis is handling arrangements.