Norfolk City Virginia USGenWeb Archives Obituaries.....Egelhoff, William Frederick, Jr. August 18, 2010 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/va/vafiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Robert Woolfitt http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00034.html#0008401 July 19, 2025, 10:44 am Wshington (DC) Post August 20, 2010 & September 18, 2010 William F. Egelhoff, Jr. - On Wednesday, August 18, 2010, of Rockville, MD. Beloved husband of Natalia Egelhoff; loving father of Tom A. Egelhoff and Helen John; stepfather of Roman Kovalev; grandfather of Landon William John; son of Rev. William F. Egelhoff, Sr. and Carol B. Talbot; brother of Elizabeth Schusser, Catherine Egelhoff and Tom T. Egelhoff. The family will receive friends at PUMPHREY'S COLONIAL FUNERAL HOME, 300 W. Montgomery Ave. (Route 28 just off I-270 exit 6-A) Rockville, MD, on Sat., August 21, 2010, from 9-10 AM with a service following at 10 AM. Interment private. Memorial contributions may be made to Hampden-Sydney College General Fund, Hampden-Sydney College, P.O. Box 637, Hampden-Sydney, VA 23943-0637. WILLIAM F. EGELHOFF "Bill" - One month ago today you left this earth. Gone too soon, but never forgotten. William F. Egelhoff, Jr, age 61, a NIST Fellow and physical chemist in the Metallurgy Division died on Wednesday, Aug. 18, 2010. During his 31 years at NIST, he developed and applied techniques sensitive to the outermost atomic layers of a sample to characterize the atomic structure of very thin films. He applied that knowledge to layer atoms on top of other layers to create structures with improved, unusual and unique magnetic properties. The latter work had an extraordinary effect on the computer industry, says Dr. Robert Shull, group leader in the NIST's Magnetic Materials Group and a longtime colleague. "Bill was a world leader in making layered thin-film metallic structures which generated the highest magnetoresistance values in response to weak magnetic fields," says Shull. "The computer industry used his research to develop more sensitive magnetoresistance sensors, which were then used as the read head on hard drives, thereby enabling them to store multiple gigabytes of data on a single disk." Bill joined the Surface Science Division of NIST in 1979 and worked on surface-related effects of electrons ejected by X-ray bombardment that led to his creation of new tools for the understanding and assessment of nanoscale single-crystal films on surfaces. As a result of these discoveries, he was elected an American Physical Society Fellow in 1991. In 1994, he moved to NIST's Metallurgy Division, where he worked on giant, tunneling, ballistic, and directionally dependent magnetoresistance effects. In 2003, he and colleagues at NIST largely debunked the ballistic magnetoresistance effect as a measurement artifact, thus deflating what had been touted as a means to create very large resistance changes and thus even higher densities of computer data storage. For his magnetoresistance work he was elected an NIST Fellow in 2005, an honor accorded to only 2 percent of NIST's technical staff, and a 2003 NIST Gold Medal Award for Distinguished Service. "He was a superb creative scientist, with excitement and enthusiasm bursting forth in a continuous stream," says Dr. Frank Gayle, chief of the Metallurgy Division. "He was leading three major NIST efforts, and was at the cutting edge of his field in each case." Bill had very high standards. "He always wanted to get his work done right away and couldn't wait until tomorrow, if he needed a new part or a measurement on a piece of equipment," says Gayle. "He constantly challenged us, but I loved every minute of it. It was a thrill as a scientist to be working with him." According to his colleagues, Bill was an extraordinary intellect, a generous man, thrifty with research funds and possessing an incredible work ethic. He published 282 articles in scientific journals and gave 284 scientific presentations. His NIST lab for the deposition, processing, and in-situ characterization of magnetic thin films was the most elaborately instrumented magnetic thin-film deposition facility in the world. (Visit his blog for more information: http:// billegelhoff.blogspot.com) He frequently worked seven days a week. Before the advent of e-mail, he even had a fax machine installed at home so he could receive results from the lab through the night. He didn't take much vacation time, and seems not to have taken any sick leave. At his death, he had accumulated 678 hours of annual leave and 3,236 hours of sick leave. Bill was the most collaborative of scientists, and one of the most versatile, according to Gayle. He could propose novel approaches on far-flung topics, such as ways to measure the level of corrosion of the steel reinforcing bars embedded within America's aging concrete bridges using an obscure technique: antiferromagnetic resonance. "He considered his most important contribution to physics to be an explanation of an effect in electron-atom scattering that had not been fully understood for 60 years," says Gayle. Bill showed that the scattering phenomenon could be understood in a relatively simple way that gave greater insight than the complex model that had been used previously. His explanation was published in Physical Review Letters in 1993. "He was proud of his many frontier contributions to surface physics and thin-film research, particularly those published in the prestigious Physical Review Letters and Applied Physics Letters," says Cedric Powell, scientist emeritus in NIST's Surface and Microanalysis Science Division. "Bill's articles were highly cited, with 12 papers each having over 100 citations." Bill was born in Norfolk, VA on July 8, 1949. The eldest of four children; he was a fierce protector of his younger siblings. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Hampden-Sydney College in 1971 with a B.S. in chemistry and earned a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the University of Cambridge in 1975. He then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, CA in 1976, followed by a scientific exchange in Akademgorodok (Siberia) where he met his wife, Natasha, whom he married on September 3, 1976, in Novosibirsk, Russia. He had an array of diverse interests to which he dedicated much of his boundless passion and energy. Bill's large garden expanded each year so he could share more produce and flowers with family, colleagues, neighbors, and many others in the community. A pilot with his own plane at the nearby Montgomery County Airpark, he would spontaneously invite friends and colleagues to fly over to the Eastern Shore and back for a meal at a restaurant. Bill brought his infectious energy, constant smile, brilliant intellect, ceaseless curiosity, and self-deprecating sense of humor with him wherever he went. Despite his outstanding accomplishments and aptitude, he was one of the most humble and down-to-earth people around. Bill was a true gem and a rare specimen. He will be profoundly missed by those of us who knew him and loved him. A resident of Rockville for 31 years, Bill is survived by his wife, Natasha; their son, Tom Alexander; their daughter, Helen Brackenridge John and her husband Clifford John; stepson Roman Kovalev; and grandson Landon William John. Bill is also survived by his parents, Caroline Brackenridge Talbot and Rev. William Frederick Egelhoff, Sr., his sisters Elizabeth Wright Schusser and Catherine Brackenridge Egelhoff, his brother Tom Talbot Egelhoff, and five loving nephews and one loving niece. File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/va/norfolkcity/obits/e/egelhoff16417nob.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.net/vafiles/ File size: 7.9 Kb