Mark Aiken Heald
Mark Aiken Heald of Pleasant Hill, Tennessee, formerly of Swarthmore, passed away on July 12. He was 91.
Mark grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, the son of Mark Mortimer Heald and June Kilts Heald. At age eight, with his parents, he witnessed the fiery end of the Hindenburg zeppelin. In the early 1930s, the family acquired a one-acre island in one of the Rideau Lakes of southern Ontario, where they built a rustic summer camp – dearly beloved by the ensuing family for many years.
Beginning in fifth grade, Mark took instruction on the clarinet. He taught himself the alto saxophone in order to play in his classmates’ Glenn Miller-style dance band. His high school years coincided with World War II, and he was very active in the local Boy Scout troop, and with their wartime projects. He graduated from Princeton High School in 1946, and from Oberlin College, as a physics major, in 1950. He continued on to graduate school at Yale University, receiving his doctorate in 1954.
At Oberlin, he met Jane Dewey, who had grown up in Montana. Mark was two years ahead of Jane, so for two years there was an active exchange of letters between New Haven and Oberlin. They were married on Jane’s graduation day in 1952.
Upon completion of his Ph.D., Mark worked in a research program at Princeton University on controlled nuclear fusion, attempting to develop a method to extract useful energy in a controlled way from the fusion of hydrogenic nuclei, for civilian purposes. During this time two children, Kate and John, joined the family. In 1958, Mark was a technological delegate to the Atoms for Peace conference and exhibition in Geneva, Switzerland.
In 1959, Mark accepted a teaching position at Swarthmore College. The college provided research sabbaticals. The first of these, 1964-65, was a wunderyear: Mark had a nine-month appointment at a British atomic energy lab. The family lived in a charming rural village south of Oxford. The two extended summers on either end of this appointment allowed the family to tour the European continent and Great Britain in a British camping van. A third child, Charles, joined the family shortly after their return home. Two subsequent sabbaticals were spent back at the Princeton lab where he had done his doctoral research, and another was spent at MIT.
Mark co-authored three books: “Plasma Diagnostics with Microwaves” (with C.B. Wharton, 1965), “Physics of Waves” (with W.C. Elmore, 1969), and “Classical Electromagnetic Radiation” (with J.B. Marion, 1990).
Mark retired from Swarthmore College in 1992. In 1998, he and Jane moved into the Uplands Retirement Village in rural Pleasant Hill, Tennessee, where they found warm friendships and many small-world connections with the other residents. At Uplands, he worked with the Pleasant Hill Child Enrichment Center, the town recycling program, and the community musical ensemble.
