Eminent Faculty and Regents Professor Kelvin Lynn passed away unexpectedly while skiing in Salt Lake City on Jan. 2, 2020.
Nationally renowned in the fields of materials science, physics, and positron and crystal growing research, Lynn was the Boeing Chair of Advanced Materials Science and a faculty member in both the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering and the Department of Physics and Astronomy. He had a wide variety of research interests, including muon, high energy, and atomic physics; antimatter for defects in mono-energetic beams; electronics development; radiation detectors; high-power laser materials; computer modeling and theory development; and materials, including metals and alloys, silicon, silicon carbide, diamond, solar cells, and gemstone-quality synthetic rubies.
Lynn was an international leader in crystal growth, developing methods to produce high-quality crystals used in industry, academia, and federal agencies. Manmade crystals inspired by Lynn’s innovative research power an astonishing range of devices from the sensors that control electronic functions in cars to the semiconductors driving computers and smartphones. In recent years, he and his colleagues made a key advance in cadmium telluride solar cell technology, overcoming a practical voltage limit that had been pursued for six decades.
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