Harold Furth, 72; Astrophysicist, Expert in Controlled Fusion

Harold P. Furth, 72, Princeton astrophysicist who originated the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor, died of heart failure Thursday in Philadelphia.

A native of Vienna who came to the United States in 1941 and earned a doctorate from Harvard, Furth worked for the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory (now Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) in Berkeley until 1967, when he joined the U.S. Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.

Furth, who devoted his career to research on controlled fusion and held 20 patents, in the early 1970s conceived the Tokamak project. It was the most advanced and highest performance fusion device ever constructed in the U.S. and produced world record-setting scientific results before closing down in 1997.

He served on committees and panels for the U.S. Energy and Defense departments, NASA and the National Academy of Sciences. Furth taught until 1999, and continued his research until shortly before his death.