Thomas Kirk, Ph.D Obituary (1940 - 2025)

Thomas B.W. Kirk was born in Denver on June 13, 1940, and died peacefully surrounded by family on May 27, 2025, just 17 days shy of his 85th birthday. He is survived by Brenda, his wife of 50 years, his sons, Elliot and Peter, and his four grandchildren. Tom lived an extraordinary life, and made sizable contributions to our fundamental understanding of the universe in his many roles within the high energy physics community. Tom was the first in his family to attend college, graduating top of his class from University of Colorado, Boulder, earning his bachelor’s in Engineering Physics. Thereafter, he earned a Ph.D in High Energy Physics from the University of Washington. Tom enjoyed many professional accomplishments, including rising from a post-doc through to an Associate Professor at Harvard University, before leaving Harvard to become a tenured Full Professor at University of Illinois. Leaving academics for the national lab system, Tom earned a reputation as one of the top high energy physicists in the world. His accomplishments included managing the Tevatron II project and Muon lab at FermiLab in Chicago, laying the foundation for the Superconducting Supercollider, and acting as the Associate Director of High Energy and Nuclear Physics at Brookhaven National Lab, where he administered the largest synchrotron in the world at the time, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. Tom often served as a reviewer of science projects for the Department of Energy as well as the National Science Foundation. He was a fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Physical Society. Upon retiring from physics, Tom and Brenda lived in Boulder, Colorado for the first 17 years of retirement, before leaving Colorado to split time between the Seattle area where Elliot and his family lives, and the Providence area, where Peter and his children live.Tom was devoted to his family and focused his energy exclusively on them. He enjoyed spending time with his children and watching them follow their paths in life, and loved spending time with his four grandchildren as well. He appreciated watching them grow and mature into the wonderful people they are today. Tom and Brenda were able to travel the world together and were able to enjoy many novel experiences throughout the world that neither could have dreamt of as children. Tom was a huge Colorado Rockies fan, and loved watching them play. Tom leaves the world a better place. His contributions to science as well as his contributions to his family will outlive him, and will be remembered by those who knew and loved him. Services are humbly entrusted into the care of Southcoast Funeral Homes “Celebrating A Life Well Lived”