Wulff Dieter Heintz (1930-2006)

Abstract

Wulff Dieter Heintz, Professor Emeritus of Astronomy at Swarthmore College, passed away at his home on 10 June 2006, following a two-year battle with lung cancer. He had just turned 76 a week earlier. Wulff was one of the leading authorities on visual double stars, and was also a chess master. A prominent educator, researcher, and scholar, Wulff was noted for being both succinct and meticulous in everything he did. Wulff Heintz was born on 3 June 1930 in Würzburg (Bavaria), Germany. Naturally left-handed, the young Wulff's elementary school teachers forced him to learn to write “correctly” using his right hand, and so he became ambidextrous. During the 1930s, Wulff's family saw the rise of Adolph Hitler and lived under the repressive Nazi regime. Conditions were austere, and it was often difficult to find fuel to keep the house warm. As a teenager during World War II, Wulff listened to his family radio for any news from the outside world. He used to say that he loved the blackouts during the bombing runs because it made it much easier to see the stars. One night, an incendiary bomb landed on the roof of his family home, and Wulff climbed up to the roof and extinguished it. The next morning, he saw that his high school had been completely leveled by Allied bombs. As Germany continued to suffer massive losses on the Russian Front, primarily due to unexpectedly severe winters, teenage boys were inducted into the military and sent off to replenish the troops. To avoid an uncertain fate, Wulff hid out in a farmhouse in the countryside outside Munich. When the Allied troops invaded Germany in 1945, the young Wulff volunteered to translate information from the American and British soldiers to the local villagers. During this time, the soldiers taught Wulff how to smoke cigarettes, a habit which he continued until his final days, even after having been diagnosed with lung cancer.