Donald Elwood Maxwell

Donald Elwood Maxwell, retired Lab physicist, died March 8, in Piedmont, Calif. He was 87.

Born Aug. 31, 1924, in San Jose, Calif. to Donald A and Bessie Maxwell, he was known for his creative and inventive talents and passions.

After graduating from Santa Clara Union High School, he attended San Jose State University. His desire to serve his country during World War II prompted him to interrupt his studies and enlist in the Army Air Corps, which selected him for an elite meteorology program.

The Corps commissioned him as a 2nd lieutenant and shipped him to the South Pacific as a weather officer.

After serving in occupied Japan, he was discharged as a 1st lieutenant in 1946.

At Stanford University, Maxwell earned a bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, and a Ph.D. in physics in 1953. While there, he married Shirley Hart. They had three daughters, Mary, Sally and Marjorie. He began his professional career as an assistant professor of physics at Washington University in St. Louis.

After moving back to California in 1955, he became an experimental physicist at what was the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory (LLNL).

For 12 years, he worked in B Division designing primaries for nuclear bombs.

In 1964, he married Joan Hoover, a mathematician at the Lab. They moved to Castro Valley and had two sons, Paul and Mike. In 1970, they moved to Piedmont.

In 1965, Maxwell entered private industry at Physics International in San Leandro, a company that worked on U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) contracts.

He spent his most productive and creative years, 1974–1989, at Science Applications Inc., a company founded in 1969 as a science, technology and engineering applications firm that worked mainly on government contracts. His publication of the Z-model on impact crater prediction is still used by NASA, the DOD and the geophysical community.

Before his retirement, Maxwell returned to LLNL in the Earth Sciences Division from 1989-1992.

He enjoyed fishing, wood and metalworking, reading, military history, golf and opera. He was fond of family and pets. He is survived by his wife, five children, six grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

Services have been held.