John Lawrence Cassingham
Dec. 22, 1918-Dec. 23, 2007
Portola Valley, California
John Lawrence "Larry" Cassingham of Ladera died Dec. 21 at The Sequoias in Portola Valley after a long illness. He was 89.
The son of a high school principal and colleague of Dr. Lewis Terman of Stanford, Mr. Cassingham grew up on the Peninsula and was a guinea pig for some of Dr. Terman's famous intelligence tests that were used to track geniuses, according to his wife, Marjorie Cassingham.
When the family moved to Southern California, Mr. Cassingham studied business at Glendale College and UCLA. He worked as a newspaperman before joining the Army Air Corps as a meteorologist during World War II.
After the war, he became an entrepreneur specializing in equipment that detected radiation. With a partner he started a business called Detectron that manufactured and marketed the first practical, portable Geiger counter. Later, a larger instrument, a nucleometer, capitalized on the uranium boom.
As one of the few businessmen in North Hollywood who were expert in nuclear materials, Mr. Cassingham was often recruited as a technical adviser to some of the atomic bomb-related movies and adventure TV shows of the 1950s. During those years, Mr. Cassingham amassed a large collection of rare forms of uranium ore that he donated to Stanford in 2005.
After retiring in 1960, Mr. Cassingham and his family relocated to Ladera. He embarked on a second career consulting with chip fabrication plants to reduce the number of circuits damaged by static electricity — a major problem at the time.
Family and friends remember Mr. Cassingham for his curiosity and love of science and astronomy. He was an amateur astronomer who traveled widely; he took in total solar eclipses in Kenya and Baja California, and Halley's Comet in Peru.
Mr. Cassingham is survived by his wife, Marjorie; a daughter, Carol Swanson of Portland, Oregon; three sons, Curt of Portland, Brian of Costa Mesa, California, and Randy of Ridgeway, Colorado; five grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
Tags: veteran, teacher/educator, business
