Robert Hulsizer, at 88; created memorable physics lessons as MIT professor emeritus

Dr. Robert Hulsizer had an academic expertise in elementary particle physics, and studied the underlying structure of the universe, its tiniest building blocks.

To help students grasp the particulars of propulsion, Robert Hulsizer would strap a pair of fire extinguishers, jets pointing backward, onto an adult-size tricycle with wheels the height of a regular bike. Climbing on, he would glance at the class in the MIT lecture hall and begin the day's lesson.

"He pulled the pins, the fire extinguisher would start shooting out stuff, and he would roll across the room," said Stephen Evangelides of Red Bank, N.J., who watched the demonstration as a graduate student years ago.

Such a display would have been enough for many professors - many students, too. Dr. Hulsizer added another wrinkle.

"He would aim the bike across the stage at a wooden door, but he would always arrange to have someone on the other side to open it at the last minute," Evangelides said. "The students would panic as he approached, then he would go rolling right through. It was a memorable lesson that way. Nobody ever forgot."

Nobody forgot the professor, either. A professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, former housemaster of a dormitory for graduate students, and sailor, Dr. Hulsizer died April 30 in the Sherrill House skilled nursing center in Jamaica Plain. He was 88 and had been diagnosed with Lewy body dementia.

With an academic expertise in elementary particle physics, Dr. Hulsizer studied the underlying structure of the universe, its tiniest building blocks. He earned renown, however, with his deft handling of somewhat larger particles of matter. For two years in the late 1970s, he was chairman of the MIT faculty, the liaison between the teachers and the administration.

And from 1974 to 1985, Dr. Hulsizer and his wife, Carol, were housemasters of Ashdown House, "which for a long time was the only unmarried graduate student housing here," said Robert Jaffe, a physics professor at MIT. "They were extraordinarily gifted at working with students from every corner of the earth. Our graduate student population is like the United Nations, and they bring the problems of the United Nations."

"Whenever there was a problem, Bob would be able to mediate and everyone would walk away happy," Evangelides said. "He seemed to be able to look at all kinds of problems and sort them out, whether they were physics problems or human problems."

And when the subject was physics, Dr. Hulsizer brought his specialty to life for the wariest of students, teaching the 8.01 and 8.02 physics classes that were requirements for everyone who attended MIT.

"He was very different from the other professors," said Ray Magliozzi, who was one of Dr. Hulsizer's students in the late 1960s and who now hosts National Public Radio's "Car Talk" program with his brother, Tom. "Back then, MIT ground you down, especially if you were an average student - and I don't mean an average student you plucked off the street, even if you were an average MIT student. But Bob Hulsizer was like an oasis. He was such a refreshing difference, and he actually made stuff that was very hard seem pretty easy."

From practical know-how to the most arcane knowledge, Dr. Hulsizer "invented all sorts of marvelously accessible ways of explaining difficult physics principals," his wife said. "He was really a genius about things like that. Even at dinner parties, guests would say, 'Tell me again about black holes.' "

Whether students sat in the classroom or at the dinner table, the learning experience was eased by his presence.

"He was this big, silver-haired, massive figure - very strong, but extremely gentle, soft-spoken, and easy-going - who combined the sense of strength of John Wayne with the openness of somebody's grandfather," Jaffe said.

Born in East Orange, N.J., Robert Inslee Hulsizer grew up in Washington, D.C., and graduated from Western High School. In 1940 he graduated from Bates College, received a master's in physics from Wesleyan University in 1942 and a doctorate from MIT in 1948.

During World War II, he worked at the Radiation Laboratory at MIT, where among his duties was coordinating range-measuring devices for ground and naval radar. After the war, he taught for 15 years at the University of Illinois before returning to MIT, where he directed what evolved into the Education Research Center. He retired as a professor emeritus in 1986.

Dr. Hulsizer and his first wife, Barbara L., divorced in 1965.

Friends introduced him to Carol Kasen, who also had formerly been married and was skeptical at first about the prospects. "I said, 'It'll never work,' and our friends said, 'No, absolutely, you have to meet,' " she recalled. They did and they married 41 years ago.

As housemasters at Ashdown House, they hosted weekly ice cream socials that became so popular and so legendary that the space where the gatherings were held was officially named the Hulsizer Room.

The Hulsizers were just as social on Martha's Vineyard, where Dr. Hulsizer sailed the Mariah, his 12 1/2-foot Herreshoff sailboat on Menemsha Pond.

"He just loved the feeling of being part of the boat," said Robert Solow, a sailing partner of Dr. Hulsizer's who taught at MIT and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1987. "I think he had the same attitude toward that sort of thing that I do: There you are, you're the person in this, but the rest of it - the boat and the water - they're not concerned with you."

Perhaps because of that, he said, Dr. Hulsizer was as careful sailing as he was teaching.

"He was meticulous about dealing with his boat and his crew," Solow said. "The word 'shipshape' could have been invented for Bob Hulsizer. He was good and careful and never left anything to chance, and certainly not to neglect. And he was very planful. I might say, 'Oh well, we'll cross that bridge we come to it,' but not Bob. If he could imagine a bridge coming ahead, he would cross it very carefully in his mind before we got there."

In addition to his wife, Dr. Hulsizer leaves a son, Stephen of Seattle; three daughters, Ann Wymore of Jemez Springs, N.M., Morgan Jenkins of Fredericksburg, Va., and Cynthia of Philo, Ill.; two stepdaughters, Elizabeth Ascher of Cambridge and Ellen Ascher of San Diego; a stepson, Steven Ascher of Newton; four granddaughters; three grandsons.

A memorial service will be held at 5 p.m. on July 19 at Abel's Hill Cemetery in Chilmark. A second memorial service will be held at 3 p.m. on Oct. 19 in the MIT Chapel.