Marian H. Rose

Marian Henrietta Heineman Rose (October 11, 1920 – August 20, 2025) was an American physicist and environmental activist. She was a research scientist at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University from 1953 to 1973, and active in protecting the Croton Watershed in New York.

Early life and education Rose was born in Brussels, the daughter of American father and a German mother, Dannie Heineman and Hettie Meyer Heineman. Her father, an electrical engineer who was born in North Carolina and raised in Germany, headed SOFINA, a power company in Belgium. His cousin Marion Wadsworth Cannon was a poet and civil rights activist based in North Carolina. She graduated from Barnard College in 1942, and earned a master's degree in physics from Columbia University in 1944. She was the only woman doctoral student in physics at Harvard University when she completed her Ph.D. there in 1947. Her dissertation was titled "Kinetic Theory of Resistance in Rarefied Gases." Career During World War II, Rose did research related to the Manhattan Project at Columbia. She was the first female teaching fellow in physics when she taught at Harvard University from 1946 to 1947. She was a research scientist at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University from 1953 to 1973, and a visiting fellow at Yale University from 1981 to 1992. Her research involved magnetic confinement fusion. and founder of the Rose Family Foundation. She was an active member of the Bedford Conservation Board, the Bedford Wetlands Control Commission, the Heineman Foundation, and the Sierra Club. The town of Bedford marked her hundredth birthday with a "Marian Rose Day", but she responded to the fuss by saying "I don't know why 100 is considered special." "On the Diffusion of a Conduction Fluid Across a Magnetic Field" (1956) "On Plasma-Magnetic Shocks" (1960) "Drag on an Object in Nearly-Free Molecular Flow" (1964) "The Transitional Drag on a Cylinder at Hypersonic Mach Numbers" (1965) "A computation of the reflection and transmission coefficients for dielectric coated waveguides" (1986) "My view: Environment under GOP stealth attack" (1995) "Our view: Watershed agreement is not enough" (1997, with George Klein) "Our view: Filtration plant will have adverse impact" (1998, with Gudrun LeLash) "Preventing pollution is the key" (1998)

Personal life and legacy Rose married British attorney and World War II veteran Simon Rose in 1948. They had four children. after suffering a stroke she died on August 20, 2025, at the age of 104, in Bedford. State Assemblyman Chris Burdick said in tribute that "she was driven by the highest values and integrity I've ever seen."