Rosa Segrè

Rosa Mines Segrè was born in Paraguay. Her family moved to Montevideo, Uruguay, where in 1966 she met Emilio Segrè and his wife Elfriede through mutual friends as they were visiting South America. Rosa was seeking to emigrate to the United States, and Elfriede agreed to be her sponsor. At first the move was difficult, but eventually she found a satisfactory position in a bank in California. Elfriede died in 1970, and two years later he and Rosa were married.

Following the death of her husband in 1989, Rosa Segrè maintained close ties with the physics department at the University of California, Berkeley and was instrumental in finding speakers for the annual Segrè Lecture, first instituted in 1987. She played a major role in editing Emilio's autobiography, published posthumously in 1993 as Emilio Segrè: A Mind Always in Motion. She also spearheaded efforts to produce a Smithsonian Institution traveling exhibition on American Nobel Laureates, which recently received funding. She was a steadfast and generous Friend of the AIP Center for History of Physics; besides substantial regular donations, she endowed the Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, and expanded the endowment with a bequest. Outgoing and vigorously active in her sixties, she died in 1997 when struck by a car while traveling in Italy.