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Stephen J. Madden Jr., 70
Mathematician helped advance aeronautics & astronomy
Stephen J. Madden Jr., 70, of Lexington and Provincetown, died Oct. 7. He was the beloved husband of Nancy Widmer Madden.
Mr. Madden was born in Newton on June 8, 1936, the son of Stephen J. Madden and Ruth L. (Geyer) Madden. He attended the Newton public schools, and decided early that he wanted to attend only MIT, applying for the first time in 9th grade. Although he had to wait until graduating from high school, he was accepted in 1954, received his BS, MS and Ph.D. degrees in mathematics, and spent his entire professional career at MIT and its affiliated institutes.
Much of his research involved celestial navigation, flight and fluid mechanics, and gravity. At the start of his career, as part of the Apollo missions, he was responsible for determining the precise location of the moon throughout the mission, allowing the deployment and redocking of the lunar module to the mother ship. In his later work, more detailed gravitational measurements were used to develop a better understanding of the shape of the Earth. His interests in geodesy and radar converged in early research on GPS system, performed at Draper Laboratory. One of his last research projects was for the LIGO system, designed to detect gravity waves from distant supernovas yielding clues to the fundamental structure of the universe.
He was also a gifted teacher. He loved to encourage his students' curiosity. Throughout his career, he taught math, aeronautics and astronautics, and earth and planetary sciences at MIT.
These interests extended deeply into his personal life. He designed and machined his own sundials in his basement workshop in Lexington. An avid fisherman, he spent many happy hours at Clapps Pond, on the beaches of Cape Cod National Seashore and on his boats in Provincetown Harbor. To help him schedule his excursions, he wrote a computer program to produce local tide charts for Provincetown, where he spent every summer since his childhood. He also loved classical music, gardening, chemistry, magic, and (as a young man) spelunking, rock climbing, skiing and mountaineering.
His greatest love was his family, especially his five grandchildren. His sense of humor, his love of life and his great passion for learning were freely shared and widely enjoyed.
In addition to his beloved wife, he is survived by his children, Dean R. Madden and his wife, Ursula Hanfstingl, and Elizabeth Madden Mirabile and her husband, Christopher Mirabile; his grandchildren, Grace and Charles Mirabile, and Andrew, Katherine and Thomas Madden, who share many of his passions; and his brothers, Robert Homer Madden of Needham and John Ross Madden of Duxbury.
In lieu of flowers gifts may be made to the Stephen J. Madden Jr. Memorial Fund c/o Office of Memorial Gifts, MIT, Room E 19-439, 77 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02139.
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Elizabeth Mayhew Cole, 92
Martin Harris Slobodkin, 86
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Oct 12th, 2006