Ralph Jacobs

Services will be held Tuesday (Sept. 9) in Pleasanton for electro-optics entrepreneur and LLNL laser scientist Ralph Jacobs, who died in his sleep at home on Aug. 29. He was 65.

Jacobs worked at the Laboratory in two stints, from 1972 to 1980 and from 1990 until earlier this year, that were bridged by a decade-long period in the private sector at San Jose-based Spectra-Physics, Inc.

Most recently, Jacobs had worked for two years as the chief technologist for the Laboratory’s Industrial Partnerships Office (IPO), spearheading an initiative to forge relationships with business schools in the greater Bay Area.

“We picked out a group of select technologies and Ralph invited the schools to prepare business plans to advance those technologies,” said IPO Deputy Director Roger Werne. “Lo and behold, we now have 12 business plans centered on LLNL technologies. This has turned out to be an important benefit to the Lab because it looks like two of those business plans may well turn into real companies.”

Werne called Jacobs an “extremely dedicated family man and father to his two daughters. On occasions, he would proudly babysit his three-year-old granddaughter, Natalie.”

Ed Moses, the principal associate director of the National Ignition Facility and Photon Science directorate, noted that Jacobs had two careers.

“One was at Spectra Physics,” Moses said, “where he helped grow the company and where he became involved in the development of advanced solid state lasers. The other was at LLNL where he worked with Jim Davis, Bill Krupke, John Holzrichter, Rich Solarz, and many others. He was nationally known as an expert in lasers and optics. He was especially helpful to the Livermore laser program with its technology transfer, its Laboratory Directed Research and Development portfolio, and its communications with the international laser and optics community.”

Bill Krupke, the former deputy associate director for the Lab’s Laser Program, recalled that he and Jacobs enjoyed a 36-year run of professional association and personal friendship dating from the founding of the Laser Program in 1972.

“I fondly remember working with Ralph on solid state and excimer laser research topics in the earliest days of the Laser Program, during which the technical foundations for the Lab’s world-acknowledged prowess in lasers was established. Ralph was an energetic and enthusiastic researcher, and it was simply fun to collaborate with him. He will be sorely missed by his many friends at the Lab and in the laser community at large,” Krupke added.

Lloyd Hackel, the former program leader for Laser Science and Technology who left LLNL in 2004 and is now a vice-president for Metal Improvement Co. Inc., recalls working with Jacobs in the early days of the Laser Program. “Ralph had an excellent understanding of what was required to make a technology a commercial success. During the times we were struggling to make laser peening into a viable technology, he was always encouraging us.”

His career at the Laboratory began in 1972 after three years on the technical staff at GTE Laboratories. As a senior physicist and project manager, he worked to develop laser sources for fusion and laser isotope separation programs.

In 1980, he was hired by Spectra-Physics Inc., working as engineering leader for its laser products division and later as firm’s chief technologist. When Jacobs returned to the Laboratory in 1990, he served as the director of the Laser Program’s New Technology Initiatives effort and later as the director of its Intellectual Property Office. He worked for seven years in what was then known as the Physics and Advanced Technologies Directorate.

Jacobs was selected as a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the Optical Society of America and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. He also was a recipient of an award for excellence in technology transfer from the Federal Laboratory Consortium. During his career, he published over 50 articles and received six patents for laser-related developments.

Jacobs is survived by two daughters, Dr. Aleda Jacobs, of Mountain View; and Liana Jacobs Boyarsky and her husband, Jay, of Palo Alto; two grandchildren, Natalie Rose Boyarsky and Abraham Jacob Boyarsky, of Palo Alto, his fiancé, Esther Ailor, of Pleasanton; his brother and sister-in-law, Edward and Mary Jacobs, of Buffalo; and his great-aunt, Estelle Indyke, also of Buffalo.

Tuesday’s memorial service will begin at 1 p.m. at the Graham-Hitch Mortuary, 4167 First Street, in Pleasanton.