Obituary of Martin Vincent Ferer, Ph.D.

Martin Vincent Ferer, Ph.D., 69, of Morgantown, passed away Monday, June 9, 2014 at Ruby Memorial Hospital of Morgantown. He was born October 31, 1944 in Chicago, a son of the late Martin and Mary Aloise Ferer. He is survived by his wife of 43 years, Mary Tiffany Ferer; two daughters, Elise Ferer and Rachel Ferer Hosterman and her husband Matt, all of Pennsylvania. He is also survived by his brother-in-law of New Hampshire and many cousins by birth and by marriage. Marty enjoyed a long and successful career as a Professor of Physics at West Virginia University. He earned a Bachelor's degree from the University of Detroit in 1966 and his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in 1972. He joined the faculty at WVU in 1971 and stayed until his retirement in 2010. His diverse research interests encompassed phase transitions and critical phenomena, nonlinear dynamics and chaos theory, fractal growth at fluid interfaces and in geologic fracturing, flow in porous media, and percolation theory. Much of this work was performed in collaboration with scientists at the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) in Morgantown, WV; he took two sabbaticals to focus on his work at NETL. He published 65 scientific articles which have been cited over 1150 times. Marty’s career took him to conferences throughout this country and Europe. In 2008, he traveled to the remote island of Svalbard, Norway, above the Artic Circle to attend a conference on hydrology in the Artic climate. He forged a particularly close collaboration with students in Germany and Norway. Marty became known as a careful and effective educator, with a long history of high quality teaching at both the undergraduate and graduate level. Even after his official retirement, he created a new class in thermodynamics for undergraduates because he was concerned that undergraduates were not getting fully trained in this important area. He also continued to teach the Physics Graduate Records Examination (GRE) preparatory class he helped create so that WVU graduates would be more competitive in their applications to graduate school. He also enthusiastically performed important administrative duties for the department. For almost 20 years, Marty was the only undergraduate adviser in the department, so every student during that time got to know him and his genuine concern for his students and his willingness to help them succeed. He worked tirelessly to mold course schedules to the individual needs of the students and ensure they were prepared for their professional careers. He also served as the interim Chairman of the Department in the 1985-86 and 1986-87 school years, during which time he oversaw a period of rapid growth in the department, hiring three faculty members. Marty was always a caring and friendly colleague, inviting many new faculty members to his house and visiting them in their homes to help them acclimate to the area and providing wise counsel to the department chairs who followed him in that role. Marty will be sorely missed by his colleagues and students. Friends and family will be received at Hastings Funeral Home, 153 Spruce St., Morgantown, on Thursday, June 12th from 5-8 pm. Visitation will continue at St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church, 1 Guthrie Lane, Morgantown on Friday, June 13th from 9am until the Mass of Christian Burial at 10am with the V. Rev. Mark G. Ward CP, VF as celebrant. Interment will follow at East Oak Grove Cemetery in Morgantown. At the end of his life, Marty fought a heroic battle with cancer. That he survived for over four years since his original diagnosis was largely due to his own courage and the extraordinary care and research at the Sarah Cannon Research Institute in Nashville, Tennessee. In lieu of flowers, contributions in Marty’s memory should be sent to the foundation which provides financial support for those who otherwise would not be able to travel there for treatment: online at www.pearlpoint.org or PearlPoint Cancer Support, 310 25th Avenue North, Suite 103, Nashville, TN 37203.