Robert Freeman Kingsbury ’34 died on April 6, 2006, in Lisbon, Maine.

Born on June 26, 1912, in Ithaca, New York, he prepared for college at Ithaca High School and became a member of Theta Delta Chi Fraternity at Bowdoin. Following his graduation in 1934, he taught for eight years at high schools in Sanford and in New York in Chazy, Ravena, and Ithaca until 1942.

He spent the summers between 1934 and 1940 studying at Cornell University, from which he received his master of science degree. He was an instructor at Westfield (Massachusetts) Teachers College in 1942-43 and an instructor in physics in the Specialized Army Training Corps Program at Bowdoin in 1943-44, after which he joined the faculty at the University of Maine at Orono.

In 1947, he began his studies at the University of Pennsylvania, from which he received his doctor of philosophy degree in 1955. He taught at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, from 1950 to 1953, when he joined the faculty at Bates College as a professor of physics. He was for some years chair of the physics department there before retiring in 1978. In the second semester of the 1979-80 academic year, he taught physics at Bowdoin.

He was a member of the Physical Society, the American Association of Physics Teachers, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1965, his major physics book, Elements of Physics, was published.

He was married in 1933 to Mary Dana, who died in 1984, and is survived by a son, Robert A. Kingsbury ’58 of Phippsburg; three daughters, Martha K. Bate of Wayne, Mary K. Clark of Schaumburg, Illinois, and Rita K. Cassellius of Norwalk, Connecticut; seven grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.