James A. Krumhansl

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James Arthur Krumhansl (August 2, 1919 – May 6, 2004) was an American physicist who specialized in condensed matter physics and materials science. He spent most of his career at Cornell University and led efforts in science policy, including serving as president of the American Physical Society and as assistant director for mathematics, physical sciences, and engineering at the National Science Foundation. In 1987 he told Congress that the Superconducting Super Collider would be too expensive.

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Krumhansl earned a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Dayton in 1939, an M.S. from Case Western Reserve University in 1940, and a Ph.D. in physics from Cornell University in 1943. During World War II he worked on microwave pulse communications for the U.S. Navy. He taught at Brown University and then returned to Cornell, later working in industry as a research director at the National Carbon Company.

Krumhansl became a full professor at Cornell in 1959 and directed the Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics from 1960 to 1964, eventually becoming the Horace White Professor of Physics in 1981. He held visiting positions at Oxford, Cambridge, and the University of Pennsylvania, and in retirement was an adjunct professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Dartmouth College. He edited the Journal of Applied Physics (1958–1964) and Physical Review Letters (1974–1977) and served on the American Institute of Physics governing board (1973–1978). As APS President (1989–1990), he advocated for more visas for Chinese scholars after 1989.

Krumhansl helped found DARPA’s Materials Research Council with Robb Thomson and was a senior fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1975 to 1979. His research covered phonons, solitons, crystal defects, and structural phase transitions, including work with John Robert Schrieffer and Gerhard Barsch. He described himself as a “gadfly” for his broad scientific interests beyond physics.

He married twice and had three children: Carol L., James L., and Peter A. He died in 2004 in Lebanon, New Hampshire, after a stroke. Cornell later established a postdoctoral fellowship in his memory, and Los Alamos held a memorial symposium in 2005.