William Franklin Palmer

March 5, 1937 – February 14, 2026

William (“Bill”) Palmer, 88, died on February 14, 2026, at his home in Columbus, Ohio, of bladder cancer. He was born in New York, NY to German immigrant parents, Christian and Berta (Lederer) Palmer, on March 5, 1937. He had an older brother, Alfred Palmer, who predeceased him.

He was educated in NYC schools, Harvard College, and Johns Hopkins University. Between Harvard and Hopkins, he served in the US Navy where he was navigator of the USS Chilton APA-38. In 1963, while a graduate student at Johns Hopkins, he married Frauke Jordan of Lutherville, Maryland. Before assuming a faculty appointment in physics at The Ohio State University in 1969, he was a post-doc at Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago.

Bill loved growing up in a loving family in the ‘40s and ‘50s, his days at Harvard and the Navy in the ‘50s and early ‘60s, and all the adventures of his life with Frauke and family in Baltimore, Chicago, and Columbus.

In the physics department at Ohio State, Bill was an active researcher and teacher and the advisor to many PhD and Master students and post-docs. He taught the full gamut of courses from first year physics for science and engineering majors to graduate quantum mechanics and took delight in his students at all levels. He was active in the University Senate, chairing the Program Committee, serving on the Faculty Salary and Benefits Committee, and chairing the Fiscal Committee. In his later years, he served as Vice Chair for Undergraduate Studies and was active in the Honors program. In 1999-2000 he was awarded the E. Rosalene Sedgwick Faculty Service Award by The College of Arts and Sciences.

Over the years, Bill and Frauke maintained close connections with his German relatives, made possible early on by Bill’s service with the 6^th Fleet in the Mediterranean, and later by his physics collaborations with researchers at several German institutions, affording him the opportunity for many side visits to his parents’ Heimat (home village of Geradstetten). 

Bill’s physics career also introduced him and his young family to alpine adventures at the Aspen Center for Physics, then later in the Swiss, Austrian, and Italian Alps, generating a lifelong love of the outdoors. In later years, he was especially fond of the remote places of the American West, inspiring similar interests in his children and grandchildren.

From 2000, Bill and Frauke wintered in Sedona, hiked often in Utah and the Sierras, and enjoyed a long and active retirement during which Bill studied family history, English literature, and the meaning of life, always taking pleasure in watching his grandchildren grow up. Over the years he translated from the German several works of a local historian of the village from which his parents immigrated, wrote a memoir of his parents, Blood and Village: Two Lives, 1897-1991 (2004), and a personal memoir, Time and Place (2020). For many years Bill enjoyed his participation in a faculty group on modernism and took great pleasure as well in the emeritus physics faculty Zoom he organized.

In retirement, Bill with Frauke was always “early to bed and early to rise.” They enjoyed three meals a day at their dining room table with a view of three bird feeders. At breakfast they discussed the plan of the day, Frauke’s next quilt design, the next house or garden project. Before dinner they looked through their windows at the Sycamore Hills ravine and with the help of a glass of wine reminisced on all manner of things, parents, children, grandchildren, friends.

Asked at the end of his life of what Bill was most proud, he quickly answered, “the good sense to marry Frauke Jordan in 1963.” Pausing then for a moment, he added: “When I was navigator, we never ran aground and always dropped the hook into the right hole. That counts for something.”

Bill is survived by his wife Frauke; their children, Jocelyn (married to John Alford) of Dublin, Ohio, Stephanie (married to Fergus Bolger) of Nottingham, England, and Christopher of Ann Arbor, Michigan; and grandchildren, Catherine (married to Billy Menges), Grace, Simon, Tommy (married to Letitia Ho), Cameron, and Adrian; and a great grandson Walter Menges; niece Caroline Palmer (married to Gary Perlman) and nephew Thomas Palmer (married to Noelle Coates).

Calling hours will be held on Saturday, March 14, 2026 from 11:00 a.m. until noon at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church, 5475 Brand Rd, Dublin, Ohio 43017. The memorial service will be held at noon at Prince of Peace, with a lunch reception immediately following.

In lieu of flowers, you may donate to the Prince of Peace Organ Fund, https://onrealm.org/princeofpeacedublin/give/organ, in Bill Palmer’s memory or to a charity of your choice.

Please click this link (https://tinyurl.com/billpalmer) to watch the memorial service online. You may watch live or as a recording later.