Alfred George Duba

Alfred George Duba passed away on August 21, 2023 at his home in Huntington, WV. He was 83 years old. Born to Frank and Erma Duba, of Braeholm, West Virginia, al was the oldest of 12 children. He graduated in 1958 from Man High School as the Valedictorian and subsequently enlisted in the Army. As a personnel clerk, he was posted to Heidelberg, Germany, where he learned German and many of the drinking songs the students sung in the taverns. The GI Bill enabled him to attend Marshall University, where he received his B.S. in Physics. While at Marshall, he worked full time as the AP Clerk at Campbell Huntington Hospital, where he met fellow Marshall student, Lucille May Smith. They married in 1964. He graduated magna cum laude from Marshall in 1966, and later received his Ph.D. in Geophysics at the University of Chicago Finishing his Ph.D. on the electrical conductivity of olivine, he benefited from research stays at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California, Harvard University, and the Australian National University in Canberra. From 1972, he was employed as a research scientist at LLNL, where he ran experiments exploring how the earth behaved at high pressure and high temperature and served various leadership roles. In 1981, he received the Marshall University Distinguished Alumnus award, and in 1985, an Alexander von Humboldt Prize to Bonn. In 1997, he was named Fellow of the American Geophysical Union. He also held visiting professorships in the Netherlands, France, and Germany. In 2002, he retired early to return to West Virginia. For the next decade and a half, he worked at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, where he produced Earth news reports for the museums and schools across the United States. His research, collaborations, and outreach brought him to locations across five continents and the North Pole. He never saw Antarctica.

Alfred enjoyed people and sharing their stories. He would regularly bring guests into his home for a meal and a glass of wine with his family, to which he was devoted. He was preceded by his parents, his brothers Melvin, James, Stanley, and Franklin, his sisters Joyce and Shirley, and his oldest son, Frank. He is survived by his wife of 59 years, Lucille, his sisters Patricia, Karen, Rose, and Regina, his brother Woodrow, two sons, William and Charles, and two grandchildren, Hiro and Sayaka.

In thanking Marshall University for the Distinguished Alumnus award, Alfred wrote that Marshall “serves as a pathway to the better life that the miners, farmers, laborers, and small businessmen want for themselves and their children,” and he observed that “individual success is the end product of a community of effort”. His family asks that, in n lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Marshall University Foundation, (The Alfred Duba Scholarship in the memo area), 519 John Marshall Drive, Huntington, WV 25703. A Celebration of Life service will be conducted on Saturday, September 16, 2023 at 12 pm at the Reger Funeral Chapel, Huntington. Friends may call from 11 am until service time on Saturday at the Reger Funeral Home. Online condolences may be made to the family at www.regerfh.com.