Herman Munczek Obituary

Herman Jaime Munczek, Professor Emeritus at the University of Kansas, died August 17, 2021 in Plantation, Florida.

He was born June 9, 1927, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Kolomeya, Poland who arrived in Argentina after the First World War. The rest of his father's family, at least six siblings, and most of his mother's family, remained in Europe and perished during the Holocaust.

Herman and his younger brother Leon were raised in Buenos Aires by their tailor and seamstress parents. During the Depression, there was scarce work so at age 12, Herman, and later Leon, had to leave school to help support their family. He was a jeweler's apprentice for 8 years, working 10 hours during the day, and once it became available, attending high school at night. Their parents had high aspirations for their children and their having to leave school was seen as a temporary setback.

Herman did compulsory military service in the Argentine cavalry, where he guarded stables at night and learned to sleep standing up in a three-point stance using his rifle for balance. After the family's economic situation improved, he attended the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), earning a Ph.D. in particle physics. His brother followed a similar trajectory and became an engineer.

Herman did a two-year post-doc in Rome, then became a professor at the UBA. After a military coup in Argentina in 1966, he moved with his family to Evanston, Illinois where he was a visiting associate professor at Northwestern University for three years. In 1969, he became a tenured professor at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, where he taught for 30 years and conducted theoretical research in particle physics. He had sabbaticals at New York University and at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, and also briefer stints at, among others, the University of Colorado in Boulder and Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. He was highly respected for his work on the Higgs-Boson theory, later validated by the CERN Super-Collider, and other research areas. After retirement, he and his wife moved to Plantation, Florida.

He was married for 24 years to Martha Soler, with whom he had two children. He leaves behind his dearly beloved wife of 39 years, Phyllis Brill Munczek, also Professor Emeritus at the University of Kansas (Plantation, FL), his two children, Debora Soler Munczek (New York City) and Steve (Esteban) Munczek (Mesa, AZ), his grandchildren Daniel Munczek Edelman and Ariel Munczek Edelman (both of Brooklyn, NY), his sister- and brother-in-law Judy and David Herman (Plantation,FL), his sister-in-law Violna Eandi de Munczek (Buenos Aires), along with nieces, grandnieces and a grand-nephew in Argentina, the US, and Israel. His gentleness, love and kindness, curiosity and intelligence, integrity and fairness, and constant wit and humor will be forever missed. He will be inurned at Star of David Memorial Gardens in North Lauderdale, Florida.