Abstract :
I got to know Marc through three different portals: student, colleague and under-study. My intent is to share with you my insights into the man and the scholar. As a student, the conversation within our student group followed a common script. One of us would ask, for example, "Can any of you expand on the notion that quasi-mode representations of the dynamics of weakly correlated fluctuations can be interpreted in terms of \´quasi-particles\´ moving in their phase-space?" The answer invariably was: "You best go and see \´The Oracle\´". Before going to The Oracle, more formally known as Professor Nathan Marcuvitz, however, required a "build-up" of courage; you had to be sharp and ready for the deep exchange that was sure to happen. But the rewards were great, as Marc\´s explanations were lucid, thorough, precise, comprehensive and with a mixture of specifics and global context. I still have all the notebooks from the courses I took with him, such as Plasma Turbulence, Plasma Dynamics, Non-linear Wave Propagation and Kinetic Theory. His lectures, clear and engaging, have served as template for developing my own courses. And then, there was the "seminar course". I learned how to distill every bit of information out of a paper; I remember vividly the readings on non linear wave propagation and going through the evolving numerical techniques for solving the Kortweg-deVries and non-linear Schrodinger equation. In my PhD thesis, I took the Dyadic-Greens function approach to the description of linear space-time dependent fields, which Marc summarizes in his book with Leo Felsen in Radiation and Scattering of Waves, to arrive at a description of non linear plasma-surface waves and discover that they undergo wave packet bifurcation. Eight years after my graduation, it was time for me to return to Poly. The plan was to expand the activities of the Microwave Research Institute (MRI) by including the work I was doing in Gaseous Electronics and to re-name the Institute in honor o- - f Ernst Weber, its first director and Marc\´s thesis advisor. A bit nervous, I took up Marc\´s invitation to spend a weekend with him and his wife Muriel at their home in Great Neck, Long Island. This was the first of a number of weekends "at the Marcuvitz" imagine, I was \´hanging out with the Oracle\´, if my buddies only knew! When my wife Christine and I decided to move back to New York, Marc and Muriel became our "welcome wagon". We discovered the gentle, caring, helpful, un-selfish, funny, witty, playful side of Marc and the beautiful relationship that he and Muriel had. Christine and I learned much from "hanging out with the Marcuvitz", including how to buy a house! Lacking experience in being director of an institute, I once again turned to Marc for advice, not so much technical advice on guiding the institute forward and acting like a statement. Marc was the personification of statesmanship. He had been both Director of MRI and also Dean of Faculty at Poly. He was smooth, articulate, clear thinking, attentive to both vision and details and, most of all, self assured. This learning period with Marc ultimately influenced my decision to pursue academic administration, culminating in my becoming Poly\´s Provost. My memory of Marc: the quintessential "Professor" in Harris Tweeds and comfortable shoes, of humble ways and great heart, all adorning a giant of a scholar.
