Norwood Babcock Gove

Norwood “Woody” Babcock Gove (1932-2024) died peacefully at his home on Monday, November 25, 2024, at the age of 92. He lived an active and productive life, dedicated to his family, his community, and the world at large.

Norwood was born October 23, 1932 in New York City, to Grace Potter Gove, of Worcester, MA, and Philip Babcock Gove, of Concord, NH. Grace was a playwright and a student of foreign languages. She was an outspoken environmentalist and feminist. One example: her children remember that she regularly returned mail to sender if it was addressed to "Mrs. Philip Gove". Philip was a scholar of literature. He was a research fellow at Oxford University, with his family, when World War II broke out. The family sailed back to America on the last civilian ship allowed to cross the ocean until the end of the war. Stateside, Philip resumed teaching and research in New York. He was awarded his PhD in English from Columbia University in 1941. But within a few months, he enlisted in the Navy. Grace, Norwood, and his younger sister Susan spent the war years near the naval bases in San Diego and Seattle to which Philip was stationed. After the war, Philip did not return to academia. Instead he opted to take an editorial position at the Merriam-Webster Dictionary Company in Springfield, Massachusetts. He spent the rest of his career there, gaining fame and some notoriety as the editor-in-chief of Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. Norwood spent the rest of his childhood, through high school, in the nearby town of Warren, MA, where his parents had bought a ~200 acre farm. Under Grace’s guidance, Norwood, Susan, and newly arrived second sister Doris, milked cows, tended other animals, and gardened. They produced all the food the family needed. Norwood was the only student in his high school graduating class to go to college. He studied physics at Harvard University (it was close enough that he could hitchhike home during school breaks). Also in college, he developed a love for theater and music. In particular he acted, sang, and even helped produce many Gilbert and Sullivan shows and he learned all the songs by Tom Lehrer, who was one of his mathematics instructors. He could quote and sing G&S and Lehrer lyrics for the rest of his life. He graduated in 1953 and then went on to graduate study at the University of Illinois (while an undergraduate studying physics, he also became interested in computers and University of Illinois was one of only a handful of schools that had its own computer at that time). He earned his PhD in nuclear physics in 1958.

With his physics and computer science knowledge, Dr. Gove fit in well with the Nuclear Research Data Project - an effort to fully document all of the known properties of all the known nuclear particles (a body of knowledge that was very much in a state of flux in those years) based in Washington D.C. and led by Dr. Katherine Way. Through the persuasion of the director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Dr. Alvin Weinberg, this entire project was officially relocated to “the lab” on Jan. 1, 1964.

When that project wound down, Dr. Gove moved to a group called the “math panel” and concentrated on operations research, and this was followed by transitioning to computer science and pioneering the field now known as data science. He stayed in Oak Ridge for the rest of his career, except for a 3-year leave of absence at the International Atomic Energy Agency, in Vienna, Austria.

While still in D.C., on New Year’s Day, 1959, he met Ruth Eleanor Miller, a geologist working for the U.S. Geological Survey, with offices at the Natural History Museum of the Smithsonian Institution. They became engaged and planned to marry on Halloween of that year. But after the arrangements were made, the officiating officer realized that was a Saturday and canceled. Consequently, the couple moved the wedding up a day and were wed at the courthouse, on their lunch breaks, by a federal judge in juvenile court; after the ceremony, they both went back to work. They commemorated their 65th anniversary on October 30, 2024. They raised three sons, David, Alan, and Andrew. Throughout the years, Noddy (as he was often called by family members) and Ruth never had an argument.

Woody (as most of his friends knew him) was a thoughtful, soft-spoken man, but nonetheless he touched many lives in the community. He was an active supporter, frequent performer, occasional director, and once writer at the Oak Ridge Community Playhouse (both junior and senior). He wrote The Little Green Child and Other Poems. He regularly donated his time and expertise at Recording For The Blind, usually reading scientific textbooks requested by aspiring scholars, for which he not only provided accurate pronunciations but gave thorough and vivid descriptions of complex images and diagrams. In later years, he frequently entertained children (and many adults!) with his tall tales and poetry at libraries, story-telling festivals, school classrooms, and other locales. He also developed a talk entitled “Growing up with a Lexicographer” that he delivered at colleges and for the general public. Other favorite activities included hiking and camping, snow skiing, water sports, tennis, table tennis, pickleball, travel, and attending continuing education classes.

Shortly before his passing, while talking with family, Norwood explained, per his lifetime studying physics, the very concept of Truth was an illusion, or worse, a cudgel used to divide people. As he put it, we can observe the universe, and come up with elaborate models for how it works, but there's no fundamental truth to be found, only better models to be created. Asked whether he believed in gravity, he would say that it's a highly successful model for predicting what will happen next, but insisting on "belief" is counter-productive. So maybe it's not 100% true that everyone who knew Woody loved him, but at least in the model we’ve developed from years of observations, it's the most accurate model we have.

Norwood had no ambition to leave behind a monument of any kind. A "vanity", he would call it. He did not want a funeral. If you wish to honor his memory, please go out and volunteer in your community; engage in conversation with people unlike yourself, and really listen to them; always help when you can, comfort when you cannot; and pay attention to the world around you, seeking out observations, especially ones that disagree with your model of the universe, as those are the ones that can make your model better. Norwood is survived by his wife Ruth of Oak Ridge, TN, sister Doris of Knoxville, TN, sons David of Bakersfield, CA, Alan of Chapel Hill, NC, and Andrew of Bainbridge Island, WA, grandchildren Darshan, Sayali, Daniel, and Ella, as well as numerous nephews, nieces, and cousins.

In lieu of flowers or cards, what the family would most like, and be most comforted by in their time of loss, is for anyone who knew him to contribute memories, in words and/or in pictures to Norwood’s memorial page, which is at http://www.gatheringus.com/memorial/norwood-babcock-gove/9777.