Hans-Jürg Gerber-Höch ✝
Prof. Dr. Hans-Jürg Gerber-Höch, emeritus professor of physics at ETH, died on 28 August 2018 at the age of 89.
We express our sincere condolences to his widow Hildegard Gerber-Höch and his entire family, as well as to all who have met him during his time at ETH Zurich and appreciated working with him.
The burial will take place within the family circle.
Family address: Hildegard Gerber-Höch, Rebhaldenstr. 45, 5430 Wettingen
external pageObituary notice in Aargauer Zeitungcall_made
external pageObituary by ETH Zurich in Neue Zürcher Zeitungcall_made
Obituary Prof. Dr. Hans-Jürg Gerber
The deceased studied and did his PhD from 1949 to 1959 at the ETH Zurich. He then worked at the University of Illinois, before joining CERN from 1962 to 1968, where he carried out in particular experiments on the 28-GeV synchrotron. In 1968, he became head of the research department at the Swiss Institute for Nuclear Physics (SIN). The Federal Council elected Hans-Jürg Gerber to become associate professor of experimental physics in 1970 and in 1977 promoted him to full professor of the same subject area. In the spring of 1997 he retired after a long and extremely successful career.
Hans-Jürg Gerber coined basic research at SIN and later at the Paul Scherrer Institute, with his precision experiments on the decay of charged muons. His flair for the fundamental led to the first direct determination of the weak interaction and thus to international recognition. As a skilled experimenter, he contributed significantly to the success of the CPLEAR experiment at CERN with unconventional ideas. His results on the violation of time reversal invariance (T-invariance) were the starting point for significant theoretical work he undertook on T, CP and CP invariance. Experiment, theory and teaching formed a unity for him. This was in particular evident in his lectures, in which he conveyed with his enthusiasm the joy of physics to his students.
Hans-Jörg Gerber was a role model in self-critical and responsible action. His co-workers and students remember his caring and humorous nature.
The members of ETH Zurich, his former students and his colleagues will honour his memory.