Sidney Coleman

Sid Coleman, Dave Kyle and James White, from left, at the 1987 Worldcon, Conspiracy, in Brighton, UK. Photo by and ©️ Andrew Porter.

(March 1, 1937 – November 18, 2007)

Sidney Richard Coleman, a longtime fan, was best known as a highly regarded physicist at Harvard. (He was very respected and well-liked in the field and has been described as "the best physicist who never won a Nobel prize" and "the physicist’s physicist.")

Coleman was one of the founders of Advent:Publishing and an occasional reviewer for F&SF. He wrote for many fanzines, including Izzard, Lighthouse, Innuendo, and Trapdoor.

In the 1950s–60s, his most active period, as a teenager and college student, he was involved in Chicago fandom. He performed with CHIAC in the fannish plays they put on at Pittcon, the 1960 Worldcon. Later, while in graduate school, he belonged to LASFS.

A native of Chicago, Coleman received an undergraduate degree in physics from the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1957. He earned his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in 1962. He moved to Harvard University that year, where he spent his entire career. He spent his wife, Diana Coleman, there in the late 1970s. They were married in 1982.

His fanac gradually decreased as he became prominent as a theoretical physicist. Unusually, he was a very effective teacher, as well. He died, after a long decline, of complications from Parkinson’s Disease. In 2023, a collection of his letters, Theoretical Physics in Your Face, including many of stfnal interest, edited by his widow and two others, was published by World Scientific.

• “Remembering Sidney Coleman” by Greg Benford (archived).

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Person

1937—2007

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