Norman Adler, Psychology

Norman T. Adler, a former professor of psychology at Penn, died on September 11 in Jerusalem, Israel. He was 75 years old.

Dr. Adler joined Penn in 1968 as an assistant professor in the department of psychology. He became an associate professor in 1971 and a professor in 1976.

He was the founder of (BBB) the biological basis of behavior program in 1978 and was its first director, a position he held until 1989 (Almanac December 19, 1978). In 1988, he received the Charles A. Dana Award for Pioneering Achievement in Health and Higher Education for his development of the program (Almanac October 25, 1988). He left Penn in 1993.

After a couple of years at Northeastern, Dr. Adler served as dean of Yeshiva College from 1995 to 2004. In 2004, he was appointed special assistant on academic and research initiatives to the vice president of academic affairs and also was named a professor of psychology.

He received the American Psychological Association Early Career Award and the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching, as well as Harry Frank Guggenheim and John Simon Guggenheim fellowships (Almanac May 4, 1976; April 16, 1985; and May 14, 1985).

Dr. Adler is survived by his wife, Sheila Stein; his children, Shira, Tanya and David, Ari, Kiva, Tahg and Lipal, Jay and Dena, Alex and Yael, Jonathan and Deborah; and many grandchildren.

Shiva will take place in Israel, but those who would like to share memories may do so at www.forevermissed.com/dr-norm-adler/

Richard Beeman, History

Richard R. Beeman, the John Welsh Centennial Professor of History Emeritus at Penn, died on September 5 at the age of 74, of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). He was a member of the Penn faculty for 43 years, and had previously served as chair of the history department, associate dean in the School of Arts and Sciences and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

He was born in Seattle and grew up on the beach in Alamitos Bay, Long Beach, California. He earned his BA from the University of California, Berkeley in 1964; his MA from the College of William and Mary in 1965; and his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1968. Before coming to Penn, he served as a Fulbright Professor in the United Kingdom and the Vyvyan Harmsworth Distinguished Professor of American History at Oxford University.

Dr. Beeman was an historian of the American Revolutionary era who wrote eight books and many articles on aspects of America’s political and constitutional history in the 18th and early 19th centuries. His book Plain Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution (2009) won the George Washington Book Prize and the Literary Award of the Philadelphia Athanaeum.

Dr. Beeman was a member of the Board of Trustees of the National Constitution Center and chair of the Constitution Center’s Committee on Programs, Exhibits and Education.

Dr. Beeman received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and the Huntington Library.

Dr. Beeman is survived by his wife, Mary Cahill; his children, Kristin Dunning, and Joshua, who is a university information security officer at Penn; two grandchildren; his former wife, Pamela Butler; and a brother.

A memorial service will be held at 5:30 p.m. on Monday, September, 26, at the National Constitution Center, 525 Arch St., Philadelphia.

Stephanie Marchesani, Penn Master’s Student

Stephanie Marchesani, a part-time master’s student at Penn’s School of Nursing, died on September 11 in New Jersey. Ms. Marchesani was 30 years old.

She was born in Philadelphia and raised in Norwood, Pennsylvania. She graduated from Interboro High School in 2004 and graduated with honors from Temple University with a BS in nursing in 2008.

She had been working full-time as a registered nurse at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania since 2008. She enrolled in the adult gerontology acute care nurse practitioner program in 2014.

Ms. Marchesani loved to travel and enjoyed cooking, biking and the occasional Broad Street Run.

She is survived by her mother, Madeline (Steve); her father, Michael; her sister, Laura (Matthew); her brother, Michael; and her boyfriend, Jeff.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks for contributions to be made to The Nursing Memorial Scholarship Fund, in memory of Stephanie Marchesani, The University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, 418 Curie Blvd., Philadelphia PA 19104. Condolences may be sent to griffithfuneralchapel@verizon.net

Ahmed Zewail, Nobel Laureate

Ahmed Hassan Zewail, a Nobel Laureate who conducted his graduate work at Penn and received an honorary Penn degree, died on August 2 at age 70.

Dr. Zewail, the first Egyptian and Arab to win a Nobel Prize in science, was considered a pioneer of ultrafast chemistry.

Dr. Zewail grew up in Desouk, Egypt, and earned undergraduate and master’s degrees in chemistry at the University of Alexandria in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1967 and 1969 respectively. He conducted graduate work at Penn on novel spectroscopies, including optically detected magnetic resonance, with Robin Hochstrasser, and received his PhD in 1974. His postdoctoral work, on coherence in multidimensional systems and energy transfer in solids, took place at the University of California, Berkeley, with Charles B. Harris. He joined the California Institute of Technology in 1976 as an assistant professor and became the first Linus Pauling Professor of Chemistry in 1995.

Dr. Zewail was a recipient of an honorary degree from Penn in 1997 and was recognized for being the first to realize the significance of ultrafast laser chemistry in the study of the dynamics of individual molecules (Almanac April 22, 1997).

Dr. Zewail was the sole recipient of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Chemistry (Almanac October 19, 1999). He was chosen for his establishment of the field of laser femtochemistry, which made it possible to “view” the motion of a chemical reaction and “view” molecules falling apart in real-time using light pulses lasting one thousand-million-millionth of a second, or a picosecond.

Dr. Zewail wrote hundreds of scientific papers and contributed to more than a dozen books.

He is survived by his wife, Dema Faham, and their four children.