Theodore George Northrop

Theodore (Ted) George Northrop, 98, passed away of natural causes on Saturday, August 19, 2023. He had been a 25-year resident of Wellfleet, MA until moving to assisted living in Brewster, MA in 2020. Ted was born on December 15, 1924 to Paul Allen and Vivian Grace Northrop in Poughkeepsie, NY.

Ted is survived by his partner of 30 years, Beatrice Scribner, his five children; Tom (Wilaiwan) Northrop, Amy (Clark) Russell, Jeff Northrop (Sandra Taylor), Kelly Northrop (Richard Bolt), and Lisa Northrop (Kevin Papa), one grandson, Jeffrey Thomas, “JT” Turner and one sister, Elizabeth (Carl) Jockusch.

In addition to his parents, Ted was preceded in death by a sister, Lucille Carter, and his brother, John Northrop.

Ted graduated from Hotchkiss School (1941). He then earned a B.S. in Physics from Yale University (1944). Immediately after finishing at Yale, Ted was commissioned in the Navy as an Ensign and sent to radar school at Harvard and MIT. He was then sent to the Pacific as a radar operator on the USS Blueridge. In 1946, he returned to civilian life and continued his education, obtaining a Master’s degree in Biological Science from Cornell University (1949) and a PhD in Physics from Iowa State University (1953).

Ted’s career was primarily as a Theoretical Physicist working in plasma and space physics. He began at Livermore Labs, CA in the Plasma Theory Group. One of his proudest accomplishments was as the primary author on an influential paper published with Edward Teller, the Livermore Director (known as the father of the hydrogen bomb). Ted then moved to a position at Berkeley, doing research in their Theory Group and teaching as an adjunct physics professor for 6 years. During this time, he wrote a book titled “The Adiabatic Motion of Charged Particles”, published in 1963 with the foreword written by Teller. In 1965 Ted’s career took him to Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD which is a NASA scientific lab. While at Goddard, Ted also taught as an adjunct physics professor at the University of Maryland. Ted spent the remainder of his career at Goddard studying space physics. One of his notable contributions was determining the age of Saturn’s rings by studying particle activity within them.

Ted first came to Wellfleet on vacation with his family in 1936 at the age of 11. He purchased his house in Wellfleet in 1977 as a summer home but relocated full time in 1998 upon retirement. Ted was a lifelong swimmer and encouraged others to “keep moving”. He loved swimming in the Wellfleet ponds and early in his retirement participated in the National Seashore Adopt-A-Pond program. He was known to have high energy, always analyzing problems and attempting to solve them. He was healthy enough to renew his driver’s license at the age of 98!

Services will be held at a later time. Ted’s family has entrusted Nickerson Funeral Home, Wellfleet, MA with the care of Ted.