We were deeply saddened to learn of the death of Tom Burrows (National Nuclear Data Center, Brookhaven National Laboratory) from cancer on 1st July 2008. Tom was a major contributor to the evolution and development of ENSDF, and played a significant role in the IAEA-ICTP workshops on nuclear structure and decay data as both a lecturer and demonstrator. His illness prevented him from attending and participating directly in this most recent April/May workshop, although reference was regularly made to his work during the course of the two weeks and his original lecture notes were used with his blessing.

After completing his post-doc studies at the University of Kentucky, Tom spent his entire professional career at the National Nuclear Data Center, Brookhaven. He was an extremely competent nuclear data evaluator for ENDF and ENSDF, and rapidly established a worldwide reputation for being an exceptionally thorough, highly dedicated and hard working nuclear scientist, with an added ability to produce and develop extremely useful software that assisted greatly in our nuclear data evaluations. All members of the International Network of Nuclear Structure and Decay Data Evaluators were greatly appreciative of the meticulous care with which he improved and maintained vital data analysis codes. Furthermore, throughout his time at NNDC, he played a very important role as mentor to a generation of new nuclear structure evaluators discovering and working on the ENSDF project.

Tom was both a gentleman and a gentle man, and will be greatly missed by all of us in the nuclear data community.

ENSDF = Evaluated Nuclear Structure Data File;
ENDF  = Evaluated Nuclear Data Files (for more direct nuclear applications)