Michael Stephen Wertheim

Michael S. Wertheim, 89, of Houghton, MI, died on September 24, in Madison, WI, after a brief illness. He was born on November 14, 1931, in Berlin, Germany. He lived through World War II in Germany with his mother before coming to the United States at the age of 15. He attended Bronx High School of Science and graduated from Cornell University in 1952 before completing his Ph.D. in nuclear physics at Yale University in 1957. He went on to work at Los Alamos National Laboratory and had various research and teaching appointments at universities in Europe and Canada. He spent the remainder of his career at Rutgers University and Michigan Technological University until his retirement in 2003. During his time in Los Alamos, he met and married Elizabeth “Betsy” Otto in 1970 and had three daughters. Outside of his career, Michael’s greatest joys were playing the guitar, swimming in Lake Superior, and spending time with his children and grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his wife Betsy in 1989 and his brother Gunther Wertheim in 2014. He is survived by his three daughters Karin (Damion Brace) Wertheim of Driggs, ID; Brigitte (David) Klann of Lindenhurst, IL; and Margaret (Darin) Eich of Madison, WI, and seven grandchildren. A memorial service will be held in the summer of 2022 in Houghton. The family requests that, in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the Nature Conservancy.