Alexander Lempicki, 85; had artistic passion for physics

ALEXANDER LEMPICKI

Alexander Lempicki had a deep understanding of electroluminescence and lasers, and in decades of research, as a Boston University professor and later as cofounder of a Watertown-based firm, he accrued 20 patents for his work.

"Some people have a mind to produce music, others create art, but he had a mind that gave him this insight into physics," said Bill Biega of North Brunswick, N.J., who attended high school with Dr. Lempicki in their native Poland.

Dr. Lempicki died Dec. 23 at Coolidge House Nursing Care Center in Brookline from complications of lung cancer and pneumonia. He was 85.

His interest in what make things tick developed at an early age while growing up in Poland during World War II.

As a youngster, he was a member of the Polish underground and was imprisoned weeks after the Soviet Army advanced through central Poland after the war. While waiting to find a way out of the country, he fled to the Krakow home of a beloved teacher who helped to spark his interest in theoretical physics.

He then made his way through Czechoslovakia and met up with the Polish Army in Italy in summer 1945. When the corps moved to Great Britain to demobilize, Dr. Lempicki went along and ended up staying to study the subject that had captivated his attention prior to the German occupation.

Dr. Lempicki made a name for himself through his study of scintillators, which absorb high-energy electromagnetic or charged-particle radiation and give off light; laser materials; and photochromic plastic.

His father, who owned a sugar mill, was killed in the Warsaw siege in September 1939, and his younger sister was killed in the Warsaw uprising in 1944.

Dr. Lempicki had become enamored with physics as a student at the renowned boarding school Liceum Sulkowski in Rydzyna, in western Poland. His formal studies were put on hold when Hitler's army invaded Poland, although he was able to complete matriculation exams in secret study groups during 1941, as the occupiers had closed secondary schools.

When he arrived in Great Britain, Dr. Lempicki spoke no English. He developed a study habit of finding 25 words at random from the newspaper each day and mastering their meaning, friends and relatives said.

He earned a bachelor's degree from the Imperial College of Science and Technology in 1949 and a master's in 1952.

He was working at the time for EMI, which is now the EMI Group, a British music company, where he worked on developing color television cameras, Biega said.

Dr. Lempicki was offered a position in the research laboratory of Sylvania Electric in New York and arrived in the United States in 1955 with his wife, Nina (Weiss). He went back to London to obtain his doctorate from the University of London in 1960.

He worked on electroluminescence and laser projects at Sylvania and was manager of the Quantum Physics Group and later the ElectronOptics Group.

In 1983, Dr. Lempicki became a BU professor and continued his research on lasers and optical properties of ceramics, among other projects.

Six year later, he started ALEM Associates with another professor, Charles Brecher, to try to solve practical problems related to their research at BU.

They stepped down from their BU posts in 2000 to take on the work full time.

He kept in touch with the teacher from Poland who had helped inspire his passion for physics and also helped recruit Polish students to study in the United States.

Over the years, Dr. Lempicki wrote over 180 papers and received 20 patents. One patent was for an improved plastic that became useful in the manufacture of protective eyeglasses.

But it was not just physics that caught his eye; he was full of questions of how and why things were the way they were.

"He was interested in the perception of time: what time is and how time develops," said Alexandra Howiger of Brookline, a longtime friend.

Dr. Lempicki and his wife settled into a home on Commonwealth Avenue. They collected art and displayed works of his great-grandfather, Piotr Michalowski, a well-known Polish artist. His wife died in 1999 of complications of Alzheimer's disease.

Dr. Lempicki leaves two daughters, Veronika Mitchell of Boston and Maria Vuoto of Pleasanton, Calif.; and five grandsons.

A memorial service will be held Feb. 22 at 5:30 p.m. in St. Ignatius of Loyola Church in Chestnut Hill.