Gary A. Burginyon, age 85, passed away on Feb. 24, in Pleasanton.
He grew up in Spokane, Washington, and attended Washington State University, where he was a Phi Beta Kappa recipient. He came to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 1968 after receiving his doctorate in experimental nuclear physics from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
At Yale, he did Coulomb excitation studies of rare earth nuclei using the MP tandem accelerator. At Livermore, he first joined the High-Altitude Physics group, where he thoroughly enjoyed the projects as it included many trips to the Pacific Missile Range on Kauai. Later, he worked on diagnostics, including trips to the Nevada Test Site and assisting a group at the Aldermaston Laboratory in England. Prior to coming to the Livermore Lab, he worked on anti-submarine warfare projects at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C.