Professor Mark Esrick

Our dear colleague Professor Mark Esrick passed away on March 16, 2026.

Prof. Esrick has been part of the faculty of our Department for more than 30 years. He had also been a student at Georgetown University, where he completed his undergraduate and graduate degrees in Physics. While the first part of his research career focused on ion-surfaces interactions, he developed several collaborations with colleagues in the Physics Department and the Georgetown University Medical School on topics that ranged from cancer to neuroscience and lung transplant research.

In the last few years, Prof. Esrick’s work had been focusing on advancing and improving physics teaching for quantum mechanics, publishing two important papers clarifying methods that had been misunderstood for decades. Mark had the epitome of the physicist mindset. He was curious about many different things, and he refused to accept an explanation unless he fully understood it. It is hard to imagine the Georgetown Physics Department without Mark’s presence. He and Marcela Parra, his wife of over 40 years, were an important part of the life of the department, sharing celebrations and stories at picnics, parties, and other events.