Irvin M. "Puff" Puffer. Irvin M. Puffer, born in 1921 in Carlisle, Massachusetts, died in that town on March 4, 2007. He served with distinction in the US Navy in World War II, based in Bermuda, flying and maintaining antisubmarine reconnaissance missions over the Atlantic Ocean. He came to work for MIT in 1962 as a senior technician and laboratory supervisor for the Superconducting Materials Group. Faculty participants in the SMG included John Wulff (DMSE), Robert Rose (DMSE), Paul Gray (EECS), Margaret MacVicar (Physics), Judith Bostock (Physics), John Hafstrom (DMSE), and Leonard Gruenberg (EECS). He designed and constructed instruments and apparatus for the measurement of superconducting properties at low and very low temperatures, high magnetic fields and electric currents and high stresses. He introduced many generations of MIT students (and a few faculty!) to the virtues of precision, ingenuity, and self-sufficiency. He retired in 1991. The students he guided went on to productive careers, many with great distinction and achievement.

His coworkers remember Puff as a “great guy, lots of fun, and a whiz” who acted as a friend and mentor to staff and faculty, as well as to students. 

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