Digital Scrapbook: Huan Tran

Huan Tran was one of my brilliant friends. We initially became friends through Knowledge Bowl. He was on the Technical High School team and I bowled for Apollo. We both attended St. Cloud State University and continued the arcane quest for trivia by uniting on the same College Bowl team. 


Huan went on to graduate school at Princeton and got a Ph.D. in astrophysics. Afterward he worked at Berkeley in cosmology. Unfortunately, Huan passed away in 2009. He was working on a microwave telescope named PolarBear to better measure the gravitational waves that emanated from the universe just after its creation at the time of his death. The telescope was renamed as the Huan Tran Telescope in his honor.  


This little blurb appeared in the St. Cloud State newspaper after Huan had decided to go to Princeton.




St. Cloud State's Top Physics Student Selects Princeton



St. Cloud State University physics major Huan Tran has spent four years as an undergraduate student developing a spectrometer that will be shot into space as part of a joint experiment between St. Cloud State, the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and NASA. The red laser light in the photo was produced by the spectrometer.



About Huan Tran


Name: Huan Tran
Age: 21
Education: Technical High School, 1992; St. Cloud State University, spring 1996; Will attend Princeton for graduate school in the fall 1996.
Family: Parents, Huy and Nhung Tran and three brothers and two sisters. Huan is the second youngest.
Accomplishments: President of the St. Cloud State physics Club. co-authored several scholarly papers, worked on a research project for NASA, tutors physics students, is a National Merit Scholar and recently won Joseph Henry Prize for research at Princeton as well as a full scholarship to the school.