NIU mourns loss of physicist Courtlandt Bohn

Memorial service will be held on campus Thursday

NIU Physics Professor Courtlandt L. Bohn, a former captain in the U.S. Air Force and an internationally known physicist, died Sunday, April 1, after a 15-month battle with cancer. He was 53.

A campus memorial service will be held for Professor Bohn from 2 to 4 p.m. Thursday in the Altgeld Hall Auditorium.

Just a year ago, Bohn was awarded NIU’s Presidential Research Professorship, an honor recognizing the university’s top scholars.

“This is a major loss for NIU, as well as for the research communities at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory, where Court Bohn was a key collaborator,” NIU President John Peters said. “In his five years at NIU, Court made a significant contribution to our physics program. He will be sorely missed by colleagues and students alike.”

Joseph Grush, acting dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, said Bohn “clearly was among our very best scientists.”

“But as good a scientist as he was, he was a better person,” Grush added. “He was a consummate gentleman, someone who had style and grace.”

Bohn was trained in the world-renowned astrophysics program at the University of Chicago, where he earned his master’s degree (1977) and Ph.D. (1983). His star rose, however, in a field that would seem far removed. Instead of gazing toward the heavens, he studied the subatomic workings of laser and particle beams, the latter of which evolve in ways similar to galaxies.

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