Remembered as a Dedicated, Innovative and Inquisitive Scientist

Former NSM Dean Roy Weinstein, professor emeritus of physics, passed away peacefully on Tuesday, June 20, at his home. He was 96. A private memorial with family and close friends was held the following weekend.

Weinstein is remembered as a dedicated, innovative and inquisitive scientist.

He joined the University of Houston in 1982, serving as Dean of the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics from 1982-1988. His leadership helped shape the College, the Department of Physics and the Texas Center for Superconductivity. He served as a professor of physics from 1982-2007, and then held research professor and professor emeritus titles.

His field of expertise was superconductivity in bulk materials, un-intuitive quantum mechanical effects, special relativity, and high field bulk magnets. In his career, he published over 350 papers, authored three physics textbooks and was an inventor on multiple patents.

He began his academic career as an assistant professor at Brandeis University (1954–1956) and MIT (1956–1959). Before coming to UH, he worked at Northeastern University (1960-1981), attaining the rank of professor and serving as chair of the physics department from 1974-1981.

Weinstein received numerous honors throughout his long career.

In 1967, he was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He received the National Triennial Scholar Prize awarded by Phi Kappa Phi and also received awards in superconductivity for record trapped field, record current density, and “Great Achievements in Superconductivity.” Weinstein received a Guggenheim Fellowship to Stanford and two National Science Foundation Fellowships to the Bohr Institute and to Harvard.

He received his S.B. and Ph.D. degrees in physics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1951 and 1954, respectively. He later received an honorary Doctor of Science from Lycoming College in 1981.