J. B. Horner Kuper

Dr. J. B. Kuper, 83, A Nuclear Physicist At Brookhaven Lab

By WOLFGANG SAXON

Published: June 10, 1993

New York Times

Dr. J. B. Horner Kuper, a physicist and former department chairman at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, died on Tuesday at the Glacier Hill Retirement Residence in Ann Arbor, Mich. He was 83.

The cause was complications from a fall, his family said.

Dr. Kuper, a former resident of Setauket, L.I., started in atomic research when that field was new and held several patents on early electronic technologies. Known as Desmond, he worked at Brookhaven from its inception in 1947 to 1974, when he became a consultant. He moved to Ann Arbor two years ago. Posts at Brookhaven

During his years at Brookhaven, he served as founding chairman of the Instrumentations and Health Physics Department, chairman of the Environmental Study Group and assistant to the director. He designed equipment for background-radiation monitoring stations and did research on Geiger counters, microwaves, general electronics and instrumentation.

A native of Manhattan, Dr. Kuper was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Williams College and earned a Ph.D. in physics at Princeton University in 1938. Before World War II he worked as a physicist at the Washington Biophysics Institute and the National Institutes of Health.

In World War II, he was associate group leader of the Radiation Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which contributed substantially to the development of military radar.

He was a member of the committee on nuclear science of the National Research Council and was chairman of a New York governor's advisory committee on atomic energy.

Dr. Kuper's wife of 55 years and a fellow worker at Brookhaven, the former Mariette Kovesi von Neumann, died six months ago. He is survived by a son, George H. Kuper; a stepdaughter, Marina von Neumann Whitman, both of Ann Arbor, and four grandchildren.