Loren A. Jacobson ’60

Loren A. Jacobson ’60 of Santa Fe, New Mexico, died of cancer on December 26, 2018. Loren was born on August 20, 1938, in St. Peter, Minnesota, the son of Loraine Hansen and Arthur Jacobsen. He graduated from high school in Great Falls, Minnesota, and at Dartmouth was a member of Gamma Delta Chi and Air Force ROTC. He graduated with a major in engineering and earned a master’s in ceramic engineering at the University of California. He was commissioned in the U.S. Air Force, where he began his career in ceramic materials, publishing research that focused on zirconium dioxide. In 1968 he earned a Ph.D. in metallurgical engineering and returned to Wright Patterson Air Force Base to work at the aerospace research laboratory. There, he analyzed Russian military hardware and patented a process of brazing electronic metals primarily for silicon chips, which facilitated the explosive growth of the emerging microchip industry. Loren then funded a rapid solidification process and discovered an aluminum-graphite composite that cut 60 percent of the weight of a space telescope. Retiring as a lieutenant colonel from the Air Force in 1982, Loren continued his research for the Los Alamos (New Mexico) National Laboratory, retiring in 2003. Thereafter he taught at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, where he developed a new solid-state physics course. Music, especially singing, was always his great joy and he performed numerous operatic roles where he lived. Loren is survived by his wife, Linda, former wife Joanne, and daughter Barbara.