Hans R. Bilger

May 15, 2013

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Hans R. Bilger, 78, passed away on Wednesday, May 15, 2013, at the UW Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin. Hans was born in Singen, in southern Germany. He married Edeltraut Gönner, his classmate of nine years, in 1958. Three years later, he received a PhD in physics from the University of Basel, Switzerland. In the fall of 1963, he joined Oklahoma State University’s Department of Electrical Engineering, beginning a 34-year career at OSU. Hans’s scientific interests focused on noise and optics, and in the 1980s he was inspired to build large ring lasers that could detect subtle movement with high precision and be used to detect gravitational waves. Hans went on to design a 16m ring laser that was built in Wettzell, Germany used to measure the earth’s rotation.