BURNT HILL, NY – Dr. Motoi Kumai, 92, passed away at home quietly on Sunday, March 10, 2013.
Dr. Kumai was invited from Japan to the United States as a physics professor at the University of Chicago in 1958. Since 1962, he worked as a research geophysicist at U.S. Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover, NH. He studied the continuous ice core from Antarctica that represented more than 120,000 years of the earth’s history. He used electron microscopes and mass spectrometers to study the solid particles and gasses trapped in the ice and was a contributor to the worldwide understanding of the earth’s climatic history, the characteristics of polar ice, snow and ice fog crystals, and permafrost providing data required for designing the Alaska pipeline, the de-icing of planes, and the construction of cold region military airplane runways.
He is survived by his wife, Mutsuko Kumai; two daughters, Keiko Ihara and her husband Satoru of Burnt Hills, NY and Etsuko Azar and her husband Peter of Winchendon, MA (formerly of Westfield, MA); a granddaughter, Marisa Ihara Amory and her husband, Jon of Portland, ME; three grandsons, Ken Ihara and his wife Vi of Melbourne, Australia, Samuel Azar of Washington, DC and Zachary Azar of Boston, MA, and three great-grandchildren.
Plans for memorial services are pending.
