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following letter was written by Lou Costrell, long-time chair of
the NPSS Standards Committee, to the sons of Ed Fairstein and friend
Liz Singley, after Ed’s death last year. It is printed here
with Lou’s permission. Ed was an IEEE Life Fellow cited “for
contributions to nuclear instrumentation, particularly in the technology
of linear pulse amplification.”
I am writing to the three of you, John Fairstein,
Joel Fairstein and Elizabeth Singley as the persons that rightfully
meant the most to my late friend, Ed Fairstein. I am grateful to
you for what you have done for Ed, especially in his last difficult
days. Ed was very proud of his sons and spoke to me often of their
accomplishments. Also, he was extremely fond of Liz who entered
his life in a wonderful platonic relationship about two years ago.
Ed told me that (in his words) she looked on him as a “father
figure.” He adored her and that fondness was reciprocated.
Thank you, Liz.
Ed was a dear friend of mine for well over 50 years. He was exceptionally
knowledgeable, intelligent and talented. He combined those characteristics
with kindness and compassion. You are all well acquainted with what
I write here but it will bear repeating.
I first met Ed in the late forties at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory,
where he worked for Cas Borkowski, and I have known and admired
him ever since. Since that time we met in many places around the
country working on the development of standards for nuclear instruments,
principally standards for radiation detectors and associated instruments.
Ed was one of the world’s foremost authorities on low-noise
preamplifiers and was the principal author of the standard on that
subject. Additionally he was a major contributor to numerous other
standards that are currently in use nationally and internationally.
While at ORNL Ed designed numerous nuclear instruments that represented
advances in the state of the art. In about 1959 (or perhaps a few
years earlier or later) while he was still at ORNL, Ed and I were
working on somewhat different approaches to Williams Tube type analog
to digital converters and we had numerous conversations about them.
However, Ed is best known for the advances he made in low-noise
preamplifiers and his analysis of pulse-shaping techniques utilized
in such preamplifiers. He taught well received short courses on
these subjects at IEEE Nuclear Science Symposia.
After Ed left ORNL he co-founded Fairport Instruments to produce
commercial instruments for the nuclear and radiation physics fields.
He later left that partnership and founded Tennelec. Under Ed’s
stewardship Tennelec became one of the most highly regarded producers
of nuclear instruments.
Many years later Tennelec went through changes in ownership and
management, and still later Ed left the company while still continuing
his interest in his contributions to the nuclear and radiation instrumentation
fields. That continued for some time but in recent years he felt,
to put it in his words, “burnt out.” He therefore dropped
technical work and became engaged in other things.
For several years Ed served as president of the Oak Ridge Library
Association to which he devoted much time and effort. At the same
time he became interested in the functioning of the human brain.
He read and wrote voluminously on the subject as well as on the
somewhat related subject of intelligence, becoming quite critical
of IQ tests and the conclusions drawn from them. When Ed became
interested in something he would research it and study it thoroughly
until he became expert in the subject.
Sometime during his period of depression he met Liz and a relationship
developed that was very pleasurable and very beneficial to Ed. They
enjoyed many hikes and stimulating conversations together. Thank
you again, Liz.
One of Ed’s passions was his motorcycle; he enjoyed many lengthy
motorcycle trips of several hundred miles each as well as countless
shorter trips around town. One reason for his reluctance to undergo
surgery until his situation deteriorated to the point that there
was no alternative was that it would interfere for too long a period
with his beloved motorcycle activities.
I was flattered some time ago when he was driving me to the Knoxville
Airport, as he had often done, he said that he wished that I lived
in the Oak Ridge area. Though we have not been able to meet in recent
years, I will miss our numerous e-mail and telephone conversations.
Louis Costrell can be reached at the National Institute of Standards,
245/C229, Gaithersburg, MD 20899-0001; Phone: +1 301 975 5608; E-mail:
louis.costrell@nist.gov.
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