Wrubel, Marshal H.

Faculty member, Indiana University Astronomy Department.

Marshal H. Wrubel was considered a child prodigy when he entered the Julliard School of Music to study piano at age 11. He graduated from Julliard and also received a B.A. in physics from the City College of New York in 1944, at the age of 20. During the next two years, while serving in the U.S. Army, he worked at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. During this time he made the difficult decision to give up a promising musical career in favor of astrophysics.

Wrubel entered the Ph.D. program at the University of Chicago and completed it in only three years, earning his degree in 1949. He spent the 1949-1950 academic year at Princeton University on a National Research Council Post-doctoral Fellowship. Wrubel accepted an Assistant Professorship at Indiana University in 1950, and by 1966 had risen to the rank of Professor of Astronomy. He was also chairman of the interdepartmental committee on astrophysics and, from 1955 to 1958, served as the first director of IU’s Research Computing Center.

A dedicated researcher, he contributed numerous papers on stellar interiors, stellar atmospheres, and hydromagnetics to leading scientific publications. He was also active in professional organizations, serving as a Councilor of the American Astronomical Society, on committees of the International Astronomical Union, and the National Science Foundation's astronomy panel. He also served on the editorial boards of several scholarly journals.

In 1968, Wrubel's already illustrious career was cut short. Spending a sabbatical year at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics in Boulder, Colorado, he suffered a fatal heart attack while hiking in the mountains, dying at the age of 44.