Moshe Rosen, a professor of materials science and engineering and a former chair of the department, died April 27 at Johns Hopkins Hospital following a brief illness.

Moshe Rosen

"He was an expert in using ultrasound to look at the microstructures of metals," said Robert E. Green Jr., director of the Center for Nondestructive Evaluation, which Rosen helped establish at Johns Hopkins. "He got along very well with his students, and he helped make sure they got jobs after they graduated.

At the time of his death, Rosen was editor in chief of the international scientific journal Ultrasonics. He was a former president of the Maryland Institute of Metals.

Family members said Rosen, 67, was a native of Romania and a Holocaust survivor. After being held in a concentration camp, he emigrated to Israel in 1948. He served as a pilot in that nation's air force and earned degrees in mechanical engineering and physical metallurgy at the Technion, the Israeli Institute of Technology. In 1967, he earned a doctorate in metal physics at the Weizmann Institute of Science, also in Israel.

After working for more than a decade as a scientist and professor in Israel, he came to the United States in 1979 as a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He moved to Maryland to work for the National Bureau of Standards, then joined the faculty at Johns Hopkins as a full professor in 1982. He chaired the department from 1988 through 1992.

"He was very proud to join the faculty at Hopkins," said Lea Rosen, of Baltimore, his wife of 45 years. "He loved teaching students, and he loved doing research. He also loved medicine and encouraged all three of our sons to become physicians."

He is survived by his wife; sons Boaz Rosen and Itzhak Rosen, both of Israel, and Ron Rosen of Baltimore; and five grandchildren.

"He was a very humble person," Lea Rosen said. "He wanted his students to call him 'Moshe,' not 'Professor Rosen.'"