Marvin L. “Murph” Goldberger (1922-2014), a prominent physicist with a distinguished career in higher education, served as the Institute for Advanced Study’s sixth Director from 1987 to 1991. During his tenure, Goldberger created positive growth and change through Faculty appointments and campus building projects, including the buildings now known as Simonyi Hall and Wolfensohn Hall, among other initiatives.

Goldberger, born in 1922 in Chicago, earned his B.S. at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (Carnegie Mellon University) and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. While serving in the Army shortly after graduation, he was assigned to the Manhattan Project, where he worked under renowned physicist Enrico Fermi from 1943­­–45. Goldberger’s association with the Institute began in 1953, while he was on leave from the University of Chicago at Princeton University. Goldberger was a Professor of Physics at Princeton University from 1957–78. He interacted regularly with Institute Director J. Robert Oppenheimer and other physicists at the Institute, where he eventually came as a Member (1966–70,1976­–77) in the School of Natural Sciences. Goldberger helped to guide U.S. science policy in the 1960s, serving on the President’s Science Advisory Committee from 1965–69 and as a consultant to the Department of Defense. Goldberger served as President of the California Institute of Technology from 1978–87.

A recipient of the Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics, Goldberger was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Philosophical Society. From 1993 until his death in 2014, he served as a Professor of Physics at the University of California, San Diego.