Alfredo Banos, 89; UCLA Physicist

Alfredo Banos, a UCLA physicist and expert on electromagnetic theory who staunchly protested the university’s management of U.S. nuclear laboratories, died June 23 in Los Angeles. He was 89.

A native of Mexico City who was educated at U.S. universities, Banos spent 10 years in teaching and research at the National University of Mexico before emigrating to the United States to join the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Radiation Laboratory during World War II. At MIT he helped develop refinements in radar, work he continued after he moved to UCLA in 1946.

Banos’ work in electromagnetic theory culminated in his highly lauded 1966 monograph, which described how waves emitted by a radio or microwave antenna spread over the earth. He also began the work on magneto-hydrodynamics that moved UCLA’s physics department into the field of plasma physics.

Throughout his long career at UCLA, the teacher and research physicist steadfastly championed the University of California system’s separation from management of the Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratories owned by the Department of Energy.