E. Ward Plummer, former director of LRSM and physics & astronomy professor at the University of Pennsylvania, died July 23. He was 79.

Dr. Plummer was born in Astoria, Oregon. He graduated with a BA in physics and mathematics from Lewis and Clark College in 1962 and earned his PhD in physics from Cornell in 1967. After completing a National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), he remained as a staff scientist until 1973. While there, he was a central part of the team that developed single-electron spectroscopy, which enabled the first-ever glimpse into electronic energy levels of atoms at the surface of a metal. 

Dr. Plummer was a leading scientist in materials physics with a focus on electronic behaviors at surfaces and low dimensionality. He was a recognized pioneer in the observation of surface electronic structures; in the discovery of surface-supported multipole plasmon modes in metals; and in the spectroscopic interrogation of single atoms on surfaces. Much of the condensed matter physics field’s current research on critical phenomena in low-dimensional systems was inspired by Dr. Plummer’s discovery of charge-density waves at the metal/semiconductor interface.

In 1973, Dr. Plummer joined the Penn faculty as an associate professor of physics in SAS. He was promoted to full professor in 1978 and was appointed the William Smith Professor of Physics 10 years later (Almanac July 12, 1988). In 1990, Dr. Plummer was named director of Laboratory for Research on Structure of Matter (LRSM) (Almanac November 27, 1990). 

In January 1993, Dr. Plummer moved to a joint position at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory and became an adjunct professor in physics and astronomy at Penn. During his time at Penn, he won a Guggenheim Fellowship and Humboldt Senior Scientist Award. He was also editor of Chemical Physics and served on the editorial board of Physical Review B. He retired from Penn in 1998. 

He was instrumental in the conception of the Joint Institute for Advanced Materials at the University of Tennessee and served as its director until his departure in 2009 for LSU–Baton Rouge in 2009. He was named Boyd Professor of Physics in 2017 and served as special assistant to the vice president of research & economic development. 

Dr. Plummer wrote more than 400 scientific articles. Other awards and distinctions included becoming a fellow of the American Physical Society; a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; and recipient of the International Science and Technology Cooperation Award. Dr. Plummer participated in a number of professional societies and served on national and international committees to review existing scientific programs and identify future directions for science and technology. 

He is survived by his wife and two children. 

Photo courtesy of Eddy Perez, LSU.

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