Physicist Allan Widom Dies

By Steven B. Krivit
October 15, 2023

Physicist Allan Widom died on or shortly before Oct. 13, 2023, at his home in Brighton, Massachusetts according to a member of his family. He was 82 and was born in 1941 in Brooklyn, New York. The cause of death and exact date of death is not known at this time. However, he had suffered from significant health issues. He is survived by his daughter, Rebecca.

Widom retired in 2016 from Northeastern University in Boston, where he had been a condensed-matter physics professor. He was a professor in the Physics Department at Northeastern since 1967. He was also a visiting professor at the University of Sussex in England, the University of Perugia, Italy, and at the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare-Frascati, Italy.

He was the author of more than 400 research papers in diverse fields of physics: condensed matter theory; liquid and solid helium; foundations of quantum mechanics; macroscopic quantum electrodynamics and quantum circuits; quantum Hall effect; high-energy and nuclear physics; classical and quantum gravity; gravitational waves; and cosmology.

He was most recently known for his work with Lewis Larsen on the Widom-Larsen theory of low-energy nuclear reactions (LENRs). A New Energy Times Web page provides extensive information about the theory. The theory was also featured in the book Hacking the Atom.

Allan Widom, August 2023 (Photo: S.B. Krivit)