Donald C. Helm

Donald Cairney Helm was born on March 26, 1937, the third of three children of an U.S. Army chaplain and teacher from Glasgow, Scotland. He was born in Japan and raised around army bases throughout the United States. Both he and his father were born in Japan, his grandfather Verling Windchell Helm being a missionary who helped found the YMCA in Japan.

Although he grew up primarily in the United States, his reference point came from outside the country. This was coupled with being a new kid in the twelve grade schools he would attend. He felt a perrenial outsider. He identified as a “third culture kid”, referring to children who grow up in a culture that is different from where they or their parents were born. This type of outsider identity resurfaced in the research he took up later in life.

After getting a degree in mathematics from Amherst College, he initially sought to continue the ministerial tradition of his fore-bearers and attended Hartford Theological Seminary. However, after time in India, he considered a more practical approach to helping people. He could help people get water.

He enrolled in the Colorado School of Mines before getting his PhD at the University of California, Berkeley. He had the intellectual joy of working under his mentor, Joseph Poland. It was his approach to groundwater geoscience that excited Donald Helm like nothing previous in his life.

While in the Bay Area, he spent some time at the USGS and the Livermore National Lab. While working at the Lab, he lived in an elegant, historic building in Berkeley, called the Berkeley City Club, where he met a fascinating administrator, Karen Reed. They courted in the shared dining hall and within a year they were married. Not long after, they had their daughter, Rebecca.

The new family moved to Melbourne, Australia. Don had been invited to join for the Australian think tank, CSIRO. His parents, brother and his brother’s family lived in Australia, although in Perth.

Although they spent idyllic time in Australia for many years, the couple missed the United States. After an offer from the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology through the University of Nevada, Reno, they moved to Las Vegas for a few years followed by Reno. Magnificent work came out of this time.

However, it was in Baltimore that the couple finally settled for their longest period. Dr. Helm had said he wanted to work for a Historically Black College or University, and he accepted the Samuel Massie Chair of Excellence at Morgan State University in Baltimore.

Donald and Karen fell in love with their home in Bolton Hill, finding places for their treasures from their trips around the world.

Although he spent much time in California with his daughter and her family, he kept a home base in Baltimore. He was comforted by the presence of his former students in Maryland. He was grateful to continue to work with them on papers into his eighties.

While in Maryland, he began on his opus. He began tying in his perspectives in geophysics toward theoretical physics and cosmology. This is when his "outsider" identity came full circle. He got his business card description changed to “cosmologist." It was here in his study filled his books, the house’s library, he did his “pluses and minuses” and he “explored the universe.”

And it was in this home library that Donald Cairney Helm died on September 17th, 2026. He is survived by his wife, Karen Reed Helm, his daughter, Rebecca Bernice Helm, his grandson, Mikhail “Kai” Helm Zagoskin and his granddaughter, Amara Zagoskin Helm.