We learned this evening that Ghassan Grandour (1940-2021) has died and we are very sad. A theoretical physicist who got his PhD at the University of California at Berkeley, he was a good friend of my husband Ted Barnes and had a huge impact on T's career as an academic physicist. Ted met him at CalTech, where Ghassan was a research fellow in the early 70s, when Ted was a graduate student. When Ted, 26, finished in 1977, academic positions in theoretical physics were hard to find. And T didn't want Silicon Valley, he didn't care about being a millionaire, he told me; he "just wanted to do physics."
Ghassan, who was about to fly off to Kuwait with his wife Leila, offered to find T a postdoctoral position there, too, and T jumped at it. It was an adventure, the beginning of T's career. Kuwait, Triest, USouthampton, Rutherford Lab at Oxford, UToronto and UTennessee.
Ghassan was an Arab, born in Lebanon. He taught T how to make Arabic coffee, probably the key to T's long and happy career as a theorist. I met him when he came to visit us at our first house in Knoxville, in summer 1990. He brought Sietske the most beautiful doll I've ever seen.
Quiet, intelligent, gentle mannered and humorous, Ghassan made a deep impression on me. That one from a foreign culture, who speaks English with intense concentration and meticulous care, can by his unique human warmth open one up to a new, mysterious, fascinating world. I've been in love with Arabs ever since.
Over the years, I have pushed Ted not to lose touch. But sadly, eventually we did. And tonight we learn through another physicist at UMiami, where Ghassan was on the faculty, that he has died.
It's a good warning. Don't lose touch with the people who, in the end, you find have written the deepest words on your heart. Such a fine, good man.