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Cyclotron founding father remembered

April 21, 2013
	<p>From left to right, East Lansing resident Carol Jo Kanners, Mason, Mich., resident Martha Mae Blosser and Grand Ledge, Mich., resident Deanna Richeson talk after the memorial service for <span class="caps">MSU</span> professor Henry Blosser on April 19, 2013, at <span class="caps">MSU</span> Alumni Chapel. Blosser was the founding director of the cyclotron facility and passed away at the age of 85. </p>

From left to right, East Lansing resident Carol Jo Kanners, Mason, Mich., resident Martha Mae Blosser and Grand Ledge, Mich., resident Deanna Richeson talk after the memorial service for MSU professor Henry Blosser on April 19, 2013, at MSU Alumni Chapel. Blosser was the founding director of the cyclotron facility and passed away at the age of 85.

Photo by Natalie Kolb | The State News

Though best known as the reason MSU will be home to the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, or FRIB, to friends and family, Henry Blosser was a gardener.

Whether he was growing a multimillion-dollar nuclear physics project out of nothing or tending his famous “Blosser tomatoes,” friends and family said almost everything the founding director of MSU’s National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory touched blossomed into a legacy that could be enjoyed for years by people around the world.

Blosser’s influence on those he met was evident by the packed memorial service Friday at the Alumni Memorial Chapel where friends, family and former colleagues met to remember him.

Blosser died March 20 in a Lansing hospice from complications from dementia, just four days after turning 85 years old.

“Henry had many dimensions — a scientist, an artist and a caring human being,” longtime friend and retired cyclotron laboratory nuclear scientist David Scott said during the eulogy. “Like the powerful superconducting magnets he built, Henry was himself a super-magnet and a super-connector, attracting the brightest and the best into his ever-widening orbit.”

Both Scott and Lois Lynch, Blosser’s wife, said condolences have come from around the world.

“He had a wonderful sense of humor,” Lynch said. “He was a special person. High energy. Interested in everything.”

While at MSU, Blosser developed initiatives to fight cancer with cyclotron technology.

FRIB Laboratory Director Konrad Gelbke said although Blosser was retired, he was active in the MSU cyclotron laboratory — encouraging Gelbke to ignore his fear of failure and develop a proposal for MSU’s Coupled Cyclotron Facility.

Even as he fought dementia, Henry Blosser’s son Gabe Blosser said his father’s mind shined through as he continued his old habits of constantly calculating numbers and figures for projects.

Days before his death, Gabe Blosser said although he could understand only a few of the words his father said, he’s certain he was attempting to give him advice on buying stocks.

Lynch said he enjoyed spending time with his four children, three step-children and 16 grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Blosser will live on in the facilities he created, in the “Blosser tomato” seeds he passed on to friends and family, and in those who knew him, family and friends said.

“His legacy will never die,” Scott said.

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