Robert Benjamin Leighton
Robert Benjamin Leighton, a longtime 
physicist and astronomer at 
Caltech, died in Pasadena on 9 March 
1997 of a neurological disease. 
Bob was born in Detroit on 10 September 
1919 and received his physics 
undergraduate (BS, 1941) and graduate 
(MS, 1944; PhD, 1947) degrees 
from Caltech. He stayed at Caltech 
his entire professional career, serving 
as division chair of physics, mathematics 
and astronomy from 1970 to 1975 
and retiring as the Valentine Professor 
of Physics in 1985.