Retired Professor of Physics George Holzwarth has passed away

George Holzwarth, physics professor emeritus passed away on March 13 at his home in Winston-Salem after a long battle with cancer. He was 86.

After joining Wake Forest in 1983, Professor Holzwarth worked with physics colleague Howard Shields to expand the University’s biophysics program. 

“George greatly enjoyed teaching his undergraduate and graduate students, and especially prized opportunities to help young scientists publish their first papers and present their first posters,” said his wife and Wake Forest physics professor Natalie Holzwarth.

He made important contributions to various biophysical problems and was famous for his early work understanding protein chirality and later work on motor proteins and cellular transport.  

“George was a role model for me when I arrived at Wake Forest in 1996,” said physics professor and physics department chair Dany Kim-Shapiro. “He showed me how to balance teaching and research. He  was happiest in the lab performing an experiment with students or tinkering with a novel instrument he was developing.”

George was a builder of elegant designs and a meticulous experimenter. He worked diligently to optimize and improve every project and process he worked on, from his research to his painstaking efforts to coax heirloom clocks to chime anew, to his baking and woodworking. He enjoyed making and selling little wooden boxes at the annual Wake Forest craft fair. 

After retiring in 2004, Holzwarth’s research collaborations with colleagues and students continued. He could regularly be found at a workspace he carved out in Natalie’s office, or in the lab. Always a devoted scientist, he finished revising and resubmitting one last journal article with colleagues prior to his death.

Information on a memorial service will be shared when available. An obituary can be found here.