A prolific inventor whose passion for alternative energy led to 34 patents—nine of them obtained after he turned 90—Richard Post was not only "an uncommon brain," according to his daughter, Markie, but also "a lovely man" defined by a deep love for family and an unbounded curiosity.
Richard Freeman "Dick" Post, PhD '51, died in Walnut Creek, Calif., on April 7 after a sudden illness. He was 96.
Post's engineering gifts were evident by the time he was 12, when he constructed a ham radio and used it to communicate with people all over the world. During World War II, his service as a civilian scientist for the Navy took him to Hawaii, Guam and Washington, D.C., where he met his wife, Marylee, at a Pomona College alumni gathering. According to family lore, Marylee went into labor with Markie while typing up her husband's doctoral thesis in Stanford Village—giving birth only after she had finished the job.
Marylee's conviction that life should have a purpose, combined with Post's desire to use nuclear technology for peaceful means, influenced his decision to start researching magnetic fusion at a fledgling Berkeley lab that became the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. In the 1980s, the Reagan administration implemented extensive budget cuts, and on the day Post's lab was to put their reactor into operation, the project was canceled; the reactor was eventually dismantled. Post then turned his attention to magnetic levitation technology and the flywheel, which he believed could be used to store vast quantities of renewable energy.
Post's fascination with energy storage—a major obstacle to the widespread adoption of alternative energy because wind and solar power are inconsistent—stemmed from his desire to preserve the finite amount of energy in the world. Markie Post recalls the "heater wars" in her childhood home, with the shivering family turning up the heat only to have her father turn it off.
Through science, Post believed that humankind had the power to shape its destiny, a conviction that fueled an exceptionally long and productive career. He retired in 1991 but returned to the lab and continued working four days a week until the week before he died. Post was a fixture at the LLNL for the 63 years of its existence and, in the last year of his life, was its leading inventor—with six records of invention (the first step toward receiving a patent) to his name. Among his many honors, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the LLNL in 2012—the first and, to date, only one of its kind. A tireless inventor who took up the piano at age 92 despite having arthritis in his hands, Post inspired others to meet life's challenges with the confidence that "you're going to figure it out," Markie says, and that "every problem has a solution."
Post was predeceased by Marylee, his wife of 65 years. He is survived by his children, Stephen, Markie and Rodney; five granddaughters; and one great-grandson.
Maggie Ryan, '17 is an intern at Stanford.
