Jacob M. Hammer, age 91, died of a heart attack on February 16th in New York City.
Survived by his wife, Katrina, his children, Daniel, Jonathan, Miriam, and his stepson, David as well as his grandchildren Jeremy and Juliet, his niece, Judith Bradley and his nephew, David Hammer. He survived two sisters, Ruth and Aliza and his brother, Lee. After receiving a PhD from NYU, he worked for Bell Laboratories and shortly thereafter for RCA Laboratories in Princeton, NJ. Editor and contributor of three books, author of over 100 published papers and 30 patented inventions, he was instrumental in developing surface emitting lasers for fiber optics, critical in communications. Given a sabbatical by RCA, he spent a year at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, England living there with his family. He carried on his work as a consultant for RCA for many years after retiring in 1987, with the Air Force, for Photodigm in Richardson, TX as well as a short time with NASA. He was a Life Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers and is listed in Who’s Who in America and American Men and Women of Science. Just after WWII, in 1946, he served in the Medical Detachment 5th Calvary Division in occupied Japan where he claimed that climbing Mt. Fuji was his biggest accomplishment. He led a full and active life enjoying cooking (and eating), reading, hiking, skiing, traveling, and especially sailing when he was a member of the Raritan Yacht Club in Perth Amboy,
NJ. Jake was a supportive and loving husband and father with a great sense of humor that came from a critical and wry way of seeing things. He will be sorely missed and remembered forever.