Mentor, Advocate & Leader in the Field

Ann Nelson was an avid hiker, backpacker and 25-year member of the Mountaineers community. Media credit: Courtesy of Ann's Family

Professor Ann Nelson, who held the Kenneth K. Young Chair of Physics and was a tireless advocate for diversity in the field, died from a fall while backpacking in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness on August 4, 2019.

Professor Nelson was a brilliant theoretical physicist who specialized in particle physics and cosmology and had been at the University of Washington since 1994. She was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was a recipient of the J.J. Sakurai prize for theoretical particle physics from the American Physical Society.

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