Professor Patrick O’Shea, Vice President and Chief Research Officer, speaks at the unveiling of the Martin Reiser Memorial.
More than 45 people gathered to remember late University of Maryland professor Martin Reiser when the Martin Reiser Memorial officially opened Monday afternoon.
The memorial, a modest paved area with a bench and flowers, sits adjacent to the Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics entrance. Reiser joined this university as a professor in 1965 before co-founding IREAP in 1981. He retired in 1998 after 33 years at this university and died in 2011 at 80 years old.
Patrick O’Shea pushed for the creation of the memorial, stressing the importance of remembering history at this university. Reiser mentored O’Shea, now this university’s vice president of research, when he was a physics doctoral student.
“This university is built on all sorts of people,” O’Shea said. “He played that role that was a little bit under the radar but had a huge impact.”
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The low-key memorial is how O’Shea said Reiser would have liked to be commemorated, as opposed to having a building named after him.
“He cared about excellence in everything he did and understood the importance of working on things that are difficult,” O’Shea said. “He was renowned as an excellent teacher and an excellent mentor of students.”
IREAP Director Thomas Murphy began the ceremony by recognizing not just Reiser’s academic accomplishments, which include authoring or co-authoring more than 200 papers, but also his dedication to the field and his students.
“We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for Martin,” Murphy said. “His technical accomplishments were every bit measured by his kindness and compassion and generosity of his time for his students.”
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Murphy said the IREAP promotes a unique sense of togetherness, rather than competition, that can be traced to Reiser.
“You’ll find a lot of institutes on-campus that are really just what I would call a building and a budget,” Murphy said. “They are places that have tenants that do research, but they are kind of off on their own. This is a little different because it’s really an intellectual community and people feel a part of that.”
Reiser’s son, Christopher, attended the ceremony, along with Reiser’s widow, Inge. His son flew from Los Angeles the night before to make the ceremony. The memorial reminds him of his childhood, he said, and is something he looks forward to visiting again.
“He took me here when he was building this up and I was a kid,” Reiser said. “The memorial is a big deal for all of us, and it’ll remind me of my time growing up.”
