David Alan Jacqmin of Princeton, NJ, passed away on Thursday, December 12, 2019.

He was born on October 15, 1947 in Boston, MA, to Harris John Jacqmin and Alice Wheeler Jacqmin. He grew up in Alton, IL; Great Neck, NY; Garden City, NY; Deer Park, TX; and Westport, CT, graduating from Staples High School in 1965. After matriculating at Swarthmore University, David earned his BS from Worcester Polytechnic Institute. While he was living in Boston and working as a carpenter, a mutual friend introduced him to his future wife, Maxine Novek. In 1977, David and Maxine were married in their Winter Hill apartment by the mayor of Somerville. David earned his PhD in applied physics from Harvard University in 1983, after which the family moved to Shaker Heights, Ohio, where they lived for the next 34 years. After a two-year stint working for Standard Oil of Ohio, he joined NASA Glenn Research Center, where he worked for nearly 30 years before retiring as a principal investigator/senior research engineer in 2014. During his time at NASA, he published numerous research papers. The paper he considered his best ("Very, Very Fast Wetting") was published in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics in 2002. It showed how it is possible to coat fibers and flat surfaces at very high capillary numbers. David was also a musician, and-after playing the French horn as a teenager in the Connecticut All State Band-took up the instrument again in the mid-90s. He played for many years with the Shaker Symphony, a community orchestra. David loved being outdoors, and was always the first to wade into any body of water he came across-regardless of whether or not he'd packed swim trunks. He was an avid traveler, taking his family on numerous trips, perhaps most memorably to Nantucket, the Jersey shore, and Napa Valley. He was a voracious reader who loved James Thurber, Djuna Barnes, "The Wind in the Willows," "Mistress Masham's Repose," and poetry. And he loved to eat-especially ice cream. After being diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 2004, David became active with the InMotion nonprofit center and the Parkinson Education Program of Greater Cleveland. He is survived by his wife of almost 43 years, Maxine; daughters Hilary Jacqmin (husband David Fishman) and Laura Jacqmin (partner James Tasch); sister Deborah Jacqmin Kramer and brother-in-law Gregory Kramer; niece Alex Kramer; granddaughter Violet Ada Fishman; and many cousins.

Donations may be made in his memory to InMotion (beinmotion.org) and the Nature Center at Shaker Lakes (shakerlakes.org).

Published by Cleveland.com