About Cliff...
Clifford Michael Surko was born October 11, 1941, in Sacramento, California to Blashia John (Vlaho) Surko, a railroad engineer, and Alma Horan Surko, a homemaker. He grew up in Roseville, CA. He had asthma as a child and had a hospitalization of several months at one point. His parents were older when he was born and his next door neighbors, Henry and Alice Berry, were like a second set of parents to him. Mr. Berry was an electrician and Cliff spent a lot of time in his garage and workshop. Cliff had a lifelong love of the outdoors, and made many trips with the Berrys to their cabin in the Sierra Mountains as a child and a young man. He had an interest in science from a young age, and in an interview with the local newspaper in connection with an 8th grade rocket club, he said his ambition was to become a physicist as an adult. He competed in target rifle in high school and lettered in boxing in college, also earning All-American honors. Before and during college, he worked as a fireman on the Southern Pacific Railroad; his mother had concerns about him accepting the job before going to college because she was concerned the high pay rate ($5 per hour in the late 1950s) might dissuade him from attending.
He studied mathematics and physics at the University of California, Berkeley, with a bachelor's degree in 1964 and a doctorate in physics in 1968. During his undergraduate years at Berkeley he met his future wife, Pamela Hansen, also a physics student who would also go on to earn a doctorate in physics. She says she noticed him
in a physics class, dozing off in the front row for most of the class then waking up and asking a very insightful question at the end. They became engaged on their second date and afterwards he would tell people that his biggest mistake was not proposing on their first date. They married in 1965 at Church of the Good Shepherd in Berkeley.
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Cliff was raised in the Catholic church and Pam was raised in the Lutheran church; they selected the Episcopal church as a compromise and were lifelong churchgoers in that denomination. They had a son, Michael, and a daughter, Leslie, while they completed their graduate studies. During that time, the University was home to numerous demonstrations (free speech, anti-war, etc.), and they attended demonstrations with Michael and Leslie in strollers, taking care to avoid those where tear gas might be involved. Upon completing their graduate studies they moved to New Jersey, where Cliff took a job at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill and Pam became a faculty member at Princeton University. They lived in Martinsville, NJ until 1988, and were members of St. Martin’s Church.
Cliff’s mother Alma had been concerned due to the 19-year age difference between Cliff and his only brother, Jack. She emphasized the importance of remaining connected with family, and Cliff took this to heart. Jack and Jack’s family were in Texas, so Cliff established a collaboration with a colleague at University of Texas so that he would have frequent opportunities over the years for himself and the family to spend time with the Texas Surkos.
In 1988 they moved to Rancho Santa Fe, where Cliff became a professor of physics at UC San Diego and Pam took a job at SAIC in artificial intelligence, serving in multiple capacities, including division chief scientist.
His physics research mostly focused on plasmas, which are collections of charged particles; examples include the sun, and the earth’s ionosphere. For research in the laboratory, they use magnetic fields and electric charges to contain the plasmas so they can be studied. In his work, he collaborated with colleagues at Bell Labs, MIT, University of Texas at Austin, Ecole Polytechnique in France, and many other institutions worldwide. He always remained conscious of the importance of teamwork in scientific research. When he earned the main award in plasma physics, the Maxwell Prize, he framed his colloquium at the award ceremony as a story of collaborations he had been involved in throughout his career. Ih the last decades of his career, he refined techniques to capture and study positrons, which are the antimatter mirror-image of electrons.
While in Rancho Santa Fe, Cliff enjoyed landscaping/gardening. His family nickname was Agent Orange Surko due to his enthusiasm for pruning with a chainsaw, and he alarmed family members by getting up on a 12-foot ladder with a tree saw at the edge of a steep embankment well into his 80s. He backpacked and visited National Parks for many years, with Anza Borrego Desert State Park and Lake Tahoe two of his favorites.
Cliff loved dogs, and the family had a succession of dogs in New Jersey and California. His enthusiasm wasn’t limited to his own dogs though, and when he walked on the trails near their home it was clear that his mental catalog of his neighbors included every dog as well as the people.
While in Rancho Santa Fe, his two granddaughters, Claire and Emma were born. The house and yard became a very favorite place for family visits, with activities including making calligraphy greetings for all the major holidays on the windows which somehow stayed up year-round, walking the dogs, going to the beach, playing Frisbee golf, and walking on the trails with Grandpa. During this time the family also expanded to include son-in-law Phil, daughter-in-law Laura (Claire’s mother), and subsequently, daughter-in-law Elsie (Emma’s mother).
Throughout his life he had remarkable energy and drive, and his last months were no exception. When he learned that his time might be short, he arranged funding so that the postdoctoral fellows in his research group could complete their training, worked with Pam to find a retirement community for them, and worked with the kids to ready the house for sale. He was working on papers until a few weeks from his death, and felt great satisfaction that they found a retirement community that Pam liked, and that had supports for whatever she would need.