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San Fu Tuan passed away peacefully in California, on August 5, 2022, with his wife of 59 years, Loretta Kan Tuan by his side. He had spent the evening having dinner with all his children and grandchildren at a family reunion. San Fu raised his family in Manoa Valley, an easy drive to University of Hawai'i Manoa, where he built the High Energy Theoretical Physics department and taught for 35 years. Known for his energetic salutations, big smile, and uniform of Bermuda shorts with kung-fu shoes, he was devoted to a daily swim at the UH pool and was a faithful member of First Presbyterian Church of Honolulu and City Church Honolulu. After retiring in 2002, he continued as Professor Emeritus until moving to Marin, CA in 2014 to be closer to his children.Born May 14, 1932, on a college campus in Tianjin, China, San Fu loved the university his entire life. Raised in Sydney and London, San Fu was the first Chinese person to win an Open Scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford University where he was a Junior Mackinnon scholar. He earned his PhD in Applied Mathematics at the University of California at Berkeley with a focus on quantum mechanics. As a post-doc at the University of Chicago, he co-discovered the "Dalitz-Tuan" resonance. As an Assistant Professor at Brown University, he researched solid state physics and superconductivity. He was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship while Associate Professor at Purdue University. He was also Editor of Modern Quantum Mechanics, a textbook that trained generations of young physicists.
San Fu is survived by his loving wife Loretta; four children: Kathy Tuan-MacLean, Melinda Tuan Groeneveld, Priscilla Tuan Tomikawa, and David Tuan; sons-in-law: Scott MacLean, Peter Groeneveld, Collin Tomikawa, and daughter-in-law Caroline Tuan; 11 grandchildren: Ling, Kai, Sonia, Ren, Tai, Micah, Mei Mei, Kainoa, Evan, Amaya, and Nathan; sister-in-law Manlin Tuan and sister Sylvia Chen.
Service and burial to be held in Westchester, NY on October 21, 2022. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made in "San Fu Tuan's honor" to University of Hawai'i Foundation, UHF Fund for Excellence
(uhfoundation.org/give)
