The police in Norwich, Conn., are investigating the slaying of Pembroke resident Eugene Mallove, a highly regarded scientist and popular father of two who died late Friday after being assaulted outside his childhood home in Connecticut.

The MIT- and Harvard-educated Mallove traveled to the Norwich home Friday to clean it, Mallove's daughter Kimberlyn Woodard said. The house had been rented out in recent years and was being cleared out between tenants, she said.

Officers from the Norwich Police Department responded to a report of an injured person at the 119 Salem Turnpike home at 10:55 p.m. Friday. The police discovered Mallove's body outside the house and pronounced him dead at the scene, authorities said. An autopsy confirmed that Mallove, 56, died as a result of multiple injuries to the head and neck, where blunt-force trauma was evident, officials said.

The initial investigation points to robbery as a possible motive, as several items appeared to have been taken from Mallove, who had a physical altercation with his assailant or assailants, the police said. The attacker or attackers also stole Mallove's dark green 1993 Dodge Caravan minivan, which has several identifying markers - including an American flag sticker, the New Hampshire license plate "INFNRG" and a white-lettered window advertisement for Mallove's scientific Web site, the police said. The van was found early Saturday in a parking lot at Foxwoods Resort Casino in Mashantucket, Conn., authorities said.

Mallove, known as Gene, was the president of the New Energy Institute, a Concord-based nonprofit organization aimed at educating the world about the possibilities of new energy. He served as editor-in-chief of its magazine, Infinite Energy, which he launched in 1995. Previously, he worked as an engineer in the private sector, then as MIT's chief science writer. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees in aeronautical and astronautical engineering at MIT, then earned his Ph.D from Harvard, Woodard said. Well-read and a natural teacher, he proved to be a gifted and lucid science writer, his daughter said.

Mallove wrote numerous scientific books and articles, as well as three books for the general public, including Fire From Ice: Searching For the Truth Behind the Cold Fusion Furor, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. He earned a credit in the 1997 film The Saint, serving as scientific consultant to the thriller about cold fusion that starred Val Kilmer and Elisabeth Shue.

The 1989 discovery of cold fusion by University of Utah scientists Stanley Pons and Martin Fleishmann proved to be a life-altering event for Mallove, who was thrilled by its possibility as an alternative energy to fossil fuels. Cold fusion attempts to create the same energy output as nuclear fusion, but without the large amounts of heat. Mallove labored to elevate cold fusion from the fringes of science to the mainstream.

He worked "harder than anyone could ever know -around the clock, he'd eat, sleep and breathe (cold fusion) . . . to educate the world about the possibilities of new energy," Woodard said.

In March, the U.S. Department of Energy announced it would take a serious look at cold fusion, prompting Telegraph science writer Dave Brooks to interview Mallove. Instead of I-told-you-so, Brooks wrote of Mallove's "polite and courteous"reaction to the breakthrough, with the scientist applauding the government's "true open-mindedness."

That positive reaction was no surprise to those who knew Mallove and were shocked by his death. Friends and family remembered him as a man committed to his family, to science and to the welfare of the Jewish community.

"My father was someone who always taught us not to care what other people think, and to follow your heart," Woodard said. "He was a very passionate man, passionate about what he believed in even against all odds, and he was a very jovial person. He would really do anything for anyone at any time."

He was a charitable man with an extremely nostalgic side, which manifested itself in both sentimental and pack-rat ways. For one, his office was always a cluttered chaos that only he could navigate, his daughter said. When Woodard, a third-grade teacher in Seattle, gave birth to her first child in February, Mallove lined up all the firsts for baby Matthew - like buying the day's newspapers as keepsakes and presenting the baby's first model car, years before he could use it.

Mallove, whose cat was named Shmaltzy (Yiddish for overly sentimental), loved puns and the occasional dirty joke. His beloved wife of nearly 34 years, Joanne, would kick him under the table if she thought his humor needed to be reined in. After Woodard and younger brother Ethan - a computer-science student at UNH -moved out of the house, Mallove and Joanne, a musician and music teacher, sold their Bow home and custom-built their empty nester's dream in Pembroke.

Mallove's life had been blessed in the past year, between the birth of his first grandchild and the wedding of his son, whose wife recently became pregnant. He was eagerly awaiting his 35th reunion at MIT in early June and served as secretary for the class, keeping his fellow alumni up to date on each other's lives.

"He had a great zest for life," said Jim Kazan, president of Concord's Temple Beth Jacob, where Mallove was an active member and former trustee. "We're all devastated," said Kazan, who remembered Mallove as "a wonderful conversationalist, a very bright man and just a great guy."

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