In Memoriam: Sam Aronson, Former Brookhaven Lab Director
May 13, 2026
Samuel Aronson, who served as the eighth director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory from 2006 to 2012, died on March 18, 2026, at 83 years of age. During his five-plus years as director, Aronson oversaw a period of remarkable scientific achievement, significant expansion, and enhanced operations at the Laboratory.
During Aronson’s tenure, the Lab announced major discoveries at its Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), including a measurement of the temperature produced in RHIC’s collisions of gold ions that showed this “perfect liquid” to be the long-sought quark-gluon plasma that existed just microseconds after the Big Bang; found evidence consistent with bubbles of “broken symmetry” that may help explain the matter/antimatter imbalance in the universe; and the discovery of the heaviest antinucleus ever observed at that time. While Aronson was director, the Lab also completed a major role in the construction of the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN and began ATLAS operations at the LHC.
“All who knew Sam will remember him as a passionate physicist, someone who was instrumental in RHIC and someone who cared deeply about Brookhaven Lab and its people,” said Interim Laboratory Director John Hill. “He will be sorely missed.”
Under Aronson’s direction, the Lab won approval and started construction of one of the world’s most advanced light sources — the National Synchrotron Light Source II, which just celebrated its 10th year of operations; completed construction of and began operations at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials, a state-of-the-art facility for the fabrication and study of energy-related materials at the nanoscale; and established an Energy Frontier Research Center dedicated to exploring the underlying nature of superconductivity, helping to move superconducting materials into real-world applications.
“I had the privilege of being Sam’s colleague, friend, and next-door neighbor for many years at Brookhaven,” said former Lab Director Doon Gibbs. “He was an outstanding scientist and science leader whose impact is still being felt across the Lab every day. Sam was a kind, generous, and patient mentor as director while I served as deputy for science — and he was always available for talking things through to decisions. Some of our most special memories come from the times our families spent together, sharing dinners on summer nights, talking about sailing, gardening, and playing games in their driveway. Sam always made time to talk to our sons about science in an accessible way. We will miss him.”
Sam Aronson earned a Bachelor of Arts in physics from Columbia University in 1964 and a Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University in 1968. From 1968 to 1972, Aronson worked at the University of Chicago’s Enrico Fermi Institute for Nuclear Studies as a research associate. He then moved to the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he was a faculty member until 1977.
Aronson joined Brookhaven Lab’s Accelerator Department in 1978 as an associate physicist and was named physicist in 1979. He moved to the Lab’s Physics Department in 1982 and was appointed associate chair of the department in 1987, then deputy chair in 1988.
In 1991, Aronson transitioned to serve as the head of the PHENIX detector project, overseeing the design and construction of one of the two large detectors at RHIC, Brookhaven Lab’s premiere particle collider, which concluded operations in February 2026 after its 25th and final run. Aronson successfully completed the challenge of overseeing the building and initial operations of PHENIX before becoming chair of the Laboratory’s Physics Department in 2001. He became associate laboratory director for nuclear and particle physics in 2005 and was named laboratory director in 2006. He served in that role until Dec. 31, 2012, when he stepped down and Doon Gibbs was named interim director.
“Sam was a father figure to many of us who arrived at Brookhaven around the turn of the century to work on RHIC. He was a wonderful and kind person. His contributions to the PHENIX experiment, to RHIC operations as associate laboratory director, and then to the entire Lab as director are beyond measure,” said Abhay Deshpande, Brookhaven’s current associate laboratory director for nuclear and particle physics. “He remained active after his retirement, working on various noble causes for the Lab’s immediate neighborhood, Stony Brook University, the American Physical Society, our state, and the nation.”
From 2013 to 2017, Aronson was director of the RIKEN BNL Research Center (RBRC), a physics research center located at Brookhaven and formed by an international collaboration between the Lab and RIKEN — Japan's Institute of Physical and Chemical Research. He also served as vice president of the American Physical Society (APS) in 2013 and APS president in 2015. Aronson was named senior scientist emeritus at Brookhaven in 2017 and later served as secretary of the National Offshore Wind R&D Consortium.
In recent years, Aronson was dedicated to the organization he co-founded, Sustainable Off-grid Solutions for African Economic Development, which is working to make locally generated power available to some of the more than 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa who do not have reliable access to electricity, driving enterprise development and technical, vocational, and business training.
Aronson was a Fellow of APS and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was a member and past Chair of the DOE National Laboratory Directors Council and served as a member of the Council's Executive Committee. He also served as a member of the Governor's Industry-Higher Education Task Force, on national review boards in Canada, Sweden, and Germany, and as a board member on the Stony Brook Foundation, the Long Island Association, the New York State Smart Grid Consortium, the Stony Brook University Advanced Energy Research and Technology Center, the Long Island High Technology Incubator, and the Governor's Regional Economic Development Council for Long Island. He was inducted into the Long Island Technology Hall of Fame in 2012 and, that same year, named Lab Director of the Year by the Federal Laboratory Consortium.
“I was a direct report to Sam during his entire term as lab director,” said former Deputy Director for Operations Mike Bebon. “It was a pleasure and a privilege to work for him. He deeply loved Brookhaven Lab and cherished the Lab's people. He was open and honest, a quiet but strong leader, never hesitating to make the hard decisions and follow through, when needed, to move the Lab forward. I miss him.”
Aronson’s wife of 42 years, Vivian (Schwartz) Aronson, died in 2010. He is survived by his children Rachel and Joseph Aronson, his brother David Aronson, and his partner, Barbara Gottfried.
Brookhaven National Laboratory is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy. The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit science.energy.gov.
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