Marjorie Diane Blasius Corcoran (July 21, 1950 – February 3, 2017) was an American

particle physicist Particle physics or high-energy physics is the study of fundamental particles and fundamental interaction, forces that constitute matter and radiation. The field also studies combinations of elementary particles up to the scale of protons and ...

and professor at

Rice University William Marsh Rice University, commonly referred to as Rice University, is a Private university, private research university in Houston, Houston, Texas, United States. Established in 1912, the university spans 300 acres. Rice University comp ...

Biography

Born as Marjorie Blasius, she grew up in

Beavercreek, Ohio Beavercreek is a city in Greene County, Ohio, United States. The population was 46,549 at the 2020 census, making it the largest city in the county and the second-largest suburb of Dayton. The Beavercreek area was settled in the early 1800s. A ...

, graduating from Beavercreek High School as co-valedictorian in 1968. To begin her higher education, in 1972 she completed her bachelor's degree at the

University of Dayton The University of Dayton (UD) is a Private university, private, Catholic research university in Dayton, Ohio, United States. Founded in 1850 by the Society of Mary (Marianists), Society of Mary, it is one of three Marianist universities in the U ...

, graduating ''summa cum laude.'' That same year she married Christopher Corcoran, taking his surname. As a graduate student at

Indiana University Bloomington Indiana University Bloomington (IU Bloomington, Indiana University, IU, IUB, or Indiana) is a public university, public research university in Bloomington, Indiana, United States. It is the flagship university, flagship campus of Indiana Univer ...

, she began doing high-energy physics research at

Fermilab Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located in Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, is a United States Department of Energy United States Department of Energy National Labs, national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle phys ...

. Her 1977 doctoral dissertation, ''Measurement of the polarization parameter in proton-proton elastic scattering for beam momenta ranging from 20 GeV/c to 200 GeV/c'', was supervised by Homer Neal. After earning her Ph.D. in 1977, Corcoran continued studies for 2 years at the

University of Wisconsin-Madison A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Uni ...

. She joined the Rice University faculty in 1980, where she would continue to teach for 37 years. At Rice, she was the first speaker of the Rice Faculty Senate upon its formation in 2005. She died while bicycling to work on February 3, 2017, in

Houston Houston ( ) is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in the U.S. state of Texas and in the Southern United States. Located in Southeast Texas near Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, it is the county seat, seat of ...

, from a collision with a

METRORail METRORail is the light rail system in Houston, Texas (United States). In , the system had a ridership of , or about per weekday as of . METRORail ranks as the second most-traveled light rail system in the Southern United States and the List ...

train.

Contributions

As a professor at Rice, Corcoran continued her work at Fermilab as part of several large collaborative physics projects including the D0 experiment, KTeV collaboration, and the muon-to-electron-conversion experiment. She also worked in physics outreach activities that included founding the Houston

QuarkNet ''QuarkNet'' is a long-term, research-based teacher professional development program in the United States jointly funded by the National Science Foundation and the US Department of Energy. Since 1999, QuarkNet has established centers at universit ...

Program for high school physics students and teachers. She helped to found the Women in Physics Group at Rice, sending undergraduates to physics conferences, and otherwise encouraging other women to participate in physics.

Awards and honors

In 1992, the

American Physical Society The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of ...

(APS) named her as a

fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned society, learned or professional society, p ...

"for contributions to experiments studying spin asymmetries in hadronic collision".. She was also awarded the Distinguished Scientist Award from the University of Wisconsin physics department in 2008. In 2015, the APS listed her as their January 2015 Woman of the Month..

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Corcoran, Marjorie 1950 births 2017 deaths People from Beavercreek, Ohio American women physicists American particle physicists University of Dayton alumni Indiana University Bloomington alumni Rice University faculty Railway accident deaths in the United States Fellows of the American Physical Society American women academics 21st-century American women Physicists from Ohio Road incident deaths in Texas Cycling road incident deaths