Leo Zwell | Scientist, 92

Leo Zwell, 92, a retired scientist with the Joint Committee of X-Ray Powder Diffraction Standards in Swarthmore, died of heart failure on Wednesday at Martin's Run, a retirement community in Media where he had lived since 2002.

Mr. Zwell was a physicist with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, U.S. Steel, and the U.S. Bureau of Standards before joining the Swarthmore firm in 1972.

He was a 1934 graduate of Brooklyn College. "He graduated at the age of 19," said his son, Michael, chief executive officer of his own human resources firm in Chicago.

"He was working full time" while in college "to put himself through school and contribute to his family's income," his son said. In the depths of the Depression, there was no money for advanced studies.

The Joint Committee, Michael Zwell said, is a publisher of research about X-raying of materials "to identify what their atomic structure was."

Besides his son, he is survived by his daughter, Carol Goertzel; sisters Gladys Berman and Priscilla Endler; four grandchildren; and a step-grandchild.

Mr. Zwell's wife of 54 years, Etta, died in 1994.

A memorial service will be held at 12:30 p.m. today at Martin's Run, near Route 320 and Paxon Hollow Road outside Media.

A spokeswoman for the Humanity Gifts Registry said Mr. Zwell had donated his body to science.