Renowned MIT physicist shot to death in Boston home

NEW YORK – A celebrated physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has died after being shot in his home, officials said, with the police investigating the incident as a homicide.

Portuguese professor Nuno Loureiro, 47, taught nuclear science and engineering as well as physics at the elite Boston-area university, MIT said in a statement on Dec 16 announcing his death.

Prosecutors said that the police responded on the night of Dec 15 to Prof Loureiro’s home in Brookline, Massachusetts, “after receiving a report of a man shot at his home”.

Prof Loureiro was transported to an area hospital with apparent gunshot wounds and pronounced dead the following morning, the Norfolk District Attorney’s Office said in a statement on its Facebook page.

“This is an active and ongoing homicide investigation,” it said.

MIT called Prof Loureiro, director of the university’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, a “lauded theoretical physicist and fusion scientist”.

He joined MIT’s faculty in 2016 and his research “addressed complex problems lurking at the centre of fusion vacuum chambers and at the edges of the universe”, the university said.

US Ambassador to Portugal John Arrigo wrote on social media platform X that he extended his “deepest condolences to the family, friends, and colleagues of Nuno Loureiro”.

“We honor his life, his leadership in science and his enduring contributions,” he added.

MIT professor Dennis Whyte, a former director of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center, called Prof Loureiro’s loss “immeasurable to our community ... and around the entire fusion and plasma research world”.

The police in Rhode Island, who are investigating a weekend mass shooting at the campus of Brown University
, said on Dec 16 that the two incidents were unrelated. AFP