Rep. Vernon James Ehlers

Vernon J. Ehlers, a physicist and longtime Republican congressman from Michigan whose scientific background led him to embrace political positions at odds with those of his party, died on Aug. 15 at his home in Grand Rapids, Mich. He was 83.

Rick Treur, Dr. Ehlers’s former campaign manager, said the cause was Alzheimer’s disease.

A nuclear physicist and college professor before he entered politics, Dr. Ehlers was elected to Michigan’s third district in 1993 and retired in 2011. Scientists were, and remain, a rarity in elected politics in America; he said he was the first research physicist ever elected to Congress.

Dr. Ehlers was part of the wave of Republicans that took control of the House and Senate after the 1994 elections, leaving President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, without a majority in Congress for the rest of his presidency.

Dr. Ehlers was a fiscal conservative who worked to enact Speaker Newt Gingrich’s policy agenda, known as the “Contract with America” — an ambitious set of proposals that often led to compromises with the executive branch. He stood with his party on key issues like balancing the budget, limiting the size of the federal government and repealing a ban on assault weapons.

But Dr. Ehlers often disagreed with Republicans on education and the environment. He voted against cuts to the National Science Foundation and a proposal to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, both efforts favored by Republicans. He voted for an increase in funding for a student loan program that many of them opposed.

He led a comprehensive review of federal science policy; helped revamp standards for education in science, technology, engineering and math; and helped allocate $270 million to clean the Great Lakes. He also led the way in modernizing the House’s internet presence and email system. His goal, he said, was to create something “so simple that an adult can use it.”

Dr. Ehlers coaxed his colleagues on both sides of the aisle to reconsider scientific issues, like the cause of climate change, when data appeared to contradict their beliefs.

“I just had to go around, continuously talking to people about issues and educating them,” Dr. Ehlers told the NPR program “Talk of the Nation” in 2012. “It took an immense amount of my time.”

It was a lonely task at first, but two other physicists, Rush Holt of New Jersey and Bill Foster of Illinois, both Democrats, eventually joined Dr. Ehlers in the House, where they did their best to inform their colleagues. In an interview with The New York Times in 2008, Dr. Ehlers described “rushing to the floor” of the House to stop members of Congress from cutting off financing for endeavors they might not entirely understand.

In one instance, Mr. Treur, the former campaign manager, said, Dr. Ehlers argued in favor of efforts to slow the spread of zebra mussels, an invasive mollusk that had colonized American waters. At one point he had to correct a colleague, who exclaimed, “I don’t know why we have to spend money researching the muscles of zebras!”

Misunderstandings like these led Dr. Ehlers to urge others in the scientific community to engage in politics.

“You can grumble all you want about those idiots in the Congress,” he told NPR. “But if you’re not helping to educate the idiots, you’re not doing your job.”

Vernon James Ehlers was born on Feb. 6, 1934, in Pipestone, Minn. His mother, the former Alice Doorn, was a homemaker, and his father, the Rev. John W. C. Ehlers, was the pastor of a Christian Reformed church in Pipestone. Dr. Ehlers said that his faith’s commitment to service helped persuade him to enter politics.

He graduated from high school in Celeryville, Ohio, then studied for three years at Calvin College in Grand Rapids before completing his undergraduate degree in physics at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1956. He earned his doctorate in nuclear physics there four years later.

Dr. Ehlers spent the next few years teaching at Berkeley before returning to Calvin in 1966. He also worked as a volunteer science adviser for his congressman at the time, Gerald R. Ford, the future president.

Dr. Ehlers served as a state representative and state senator before he won a special election to fill the seat of Representative Paul B. Henry, who had died of a brain tumor in 1993.

He married Johanna Meulink in 1958. She survives him, as do two sons, Brian and Todd; two daughters, Heidi Rienstra and Marla Ehlers; two sisters, Frances Engle and Henrietta Buurma; five grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

Despite Dr. Ehlers’s efforts, scientists remain a minuscule part of the Congress, according to the Congressional Research Services. Aside from a smattering of engineers and medical doctors, there are only three members of Congress — among 540 representatives and senators — with backgrounds in science: a chemist, a microbiologist and a lone physicist, Dr. Foster.