Obituaries

Elihu A. BoldtNASA Senior Scientist

Elihu A. Boldt, 77, a NASA astrophysicist who helped launch Goddard Space Flight Center's program in X-ray astronomy, died Sept. 12 at Doctors Community Hospital in Lanham after an apparent heart attack.

Dr. Boldt joined the Greenbelt-based space flight center in 1964 and helped establish the X-ray astronomy program intended to study cosmic radiation.

He oversaw the X-ray astrophysics group at Goddard's Laboratory for High Energy Astrophysics until 1995. He continued working another decade as a senior scientist on ultra-high energy cosmic rays with post-doctoral fellows and visiting scientists.

Elihu Aaron Boldt was a native of New Brunswick, N.J., and a 1953 graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he also received a doctorate in physics in 1958.

He was a Greenbelt resident and an adjunct physics professor at the University of Maryland. He was a fellow of the American Physical Society, among other professional affiliations, and served on scientific panels and committees.

Survivors include his wife, Yvette Benharroch Boldt, whom he married in 1971, of Greenbelt; three children, Adam Boldt of Pikesville, Md., Abigail Tram of Chandler, Ariz., and Jessica Boldt of Weehawken, N.J.; and a grandson.

-- Adam Bernstein

Roy R. 'Rip' Coffin Jr.Episcopal Minister

Roy R. "Rip" Coffin Jr., 76, an Episcopal minister who in 1983 helped form the Interim Ministry Network, an organization of pastors who provide support to local congregations in transition, died Sept. 10 at his home in Chevy Chase. He had esophageal cancer.

From 1978 to 1994, Rev. Coffin was an interim pastor for 10 congregations within the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, Maryland and Virginia.

Roy Riddell Coffin Jr. was born in Merion, Pa. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1954 with a degree in government and moved to the Washington region in 1959 after receiving a master's degree in business administration from the University of Michigan.