Frederick Gardner Cottrell died on November 16, 1948. His longtime associate, Vannevar Bush, wrote a biographical memoir that was published by the National Academy of Sciences in 1952, in Cottrell’s honor. Bush concluded with these words: “Dr. Cottrell’s death … during a meeting of the National Academy of Sciences on his well loved campus of University of California at Berkeley. Appropriately, among the technical papers which he had heard the day before his death was an account of the development of the cyclotron, in which a grant from the Research Corporation had been of early assistance.”
Another friend, Farrington Daniels, who was seated beside Cottrell when he died, wrote an obituary for Cottrell, published in “Science” in 1949, in which he noted, “This is the way he probably would have chosen for the ending of his vigorous, unselfish life.”
Along the Redwood Highway in northern California, a redwood grove was named in memory of Cottrell. A plaque at the grove, in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, acknowledges Cottrell’s contributions to science.
To read Bush’s complete memoir of Cottrell: http://books.nap.edu/html/biomems/fcottrell.pdf