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Faculty News
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- We now have in the three professional ranks of full-time faculty about
30. The combined total of full-time, part-time and other faculty at all
ranks is about 40. The research areas represented are: acoustics,
astrophysics, biophysics, condensed matter physics, non-linear physics,
nuclear physics and nanoscience.
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- During the past year for the faculty: Thomas Statler was
promoted to full professor; Alexander Govorov was given tenure; and
Peter Hoffmann-Pinther, Ph.D. 1973, was appointed as an adjunct
professor.
- Ohio University is a part owner and operator of the MDM
Observatory group of universities using telescopes on Kitt Peak in
Arizona. The universities represented are: Ohio, Michigan, Dartmouth,
Columbia and Ohio State. There are two reflecting ground-based
telescopes used. One has a light gathering mirror of 1.3 meters in
diameter and the second has a 2.4 meter mirror. Physics department
faculty and graduate and undergraduate students go to Kitt Peak for
observations.
- Our physics and astronomy faculty are members and founders of
several institutes. (In some of these, faculty in other departments are
participating also.) They are: the Institute of Nuclear and Particle
Physics, the Astrophysical Institute, and the Nanoscale and Quantum
Phenomena Institute
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- David Tees was presented with a Faculty Early Career Development
Award from NSF.
Faculty Changes
- We report here the present positions for the faculty who left
recently. See the Chair's Report also.
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- Jean Heremans and Victoria Soghomonian have moved from Ohio to
join the faculty at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. They made
important contributions to our experimental condensed matter research.
They also taught labs and lecture courses.
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- Larry Wilen also left the department and does research at the
Unilever Company in New Haven, Connecticut. His research was in
condensed matter physics and acoustics.
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- Brian McNamara has taken a faculty position at the University of
Waterloo in Canada. Brian is an astrophysicist.
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- Michael Moore moved to take an assistant professor appointment at
Michigan State. He will be in the Physics Department and his wife will
be a faculty member in geology.
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- Daniel Carman has recently taken a position at the Jefferson
Laboratory in Virginia.
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- Peter Hoffman-Pinther, Ph.D. 1973, is now in our department as an
Adjunct Professor. He retired from teaching physics at the University
of Houston–Downtown Campus. He lives with his wife in Athens.
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- Several new faculty joined our department recently. They are
described in the Chair's Report.
Regional Campus Faculty
- The list of regional campus physics and physical science faculty
is:
OU – Eastern – James Kettler (Deceased)
OU – Zanesville – Animesh Chakraborty
OU – Lancaster – Steve Nerney (Retired)
OU – Chillicothe – Arun Venkatachar
OU – Southern – Robert Dils, Maryanne Graham
and
Philip Steed. Maryanne has taught at Proctorville also.
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- Recently a physical science course was taught at the regional
campus in Pickerington. Claudell James taught the course.
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- We are sorry to report that two of our faculty will no longer be
in our regional campus physics program. They were very important to the
program and will be missed. Temporary faculty are replacements for
these two faculty members.
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- Steve Nerney at OU–Lancaster retired. He taught physics and
physical science courses and did research in astrophysics, which was
supported by federal grants.
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- James Kettler at OU-Eastern, a full professor, died in January
2006. He was active in AAPT and a well-respected professor at Eastern.
His papers at Appalachian Section meetings were very complete and very
thorough. The theory and a working demo of a physics problem were
presented in each paper.
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- Many years ago (1971), Ohio had a campus at Portsmouth and our
courses were taught by Professor Hubler. Also, in the past, faculty
from Marshall University helped to teach the physics and physical
science courses at Ohio University–Southern in Ironton. Thus, the
regional campus instruction has been for many years an important part of
our program in physics and physical sciences. Mark Lucas and Heather
Krugman recently replaced Burt Stumpf as coordinators for the regional
campus program in physics. Burt was coordinator from 1969 to 2003.
Retired Faculty
- Jack Rapaport and his wife, Irma, now live in North Carolina and
also in Florida. Jack was a Distinguished Professor of Physics.
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- Those retired faculty who live full- or part-time in the Athens
area are: Charles Chen, Earle Hunt, Roger Finlay, Ray Lane, James
Dilley, Roger Rollins, Ernst Breitenberger, Charles Brient, David Onley
and Burt Stumpf.
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- Those faculty who retired but live elsewhere are: Ronald
Cappelletti (Montogomery Village, Maryland); Seung Yun (Phoenix and
California); James Shipman (Belington, West Virginia); Tomo Tanaka
(Japan); and Jerry Barry (Gainesville, Florida). Gene Stoppenhagen,
Ph.D. 1968, retired from OU – Lancaster and lives nearby.
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- As reported previously, Edward Sanford, Darrell Huwe, Thomas
Smith and John Edwards are deceased. Darrell is honored by the Darrell
Otto Huwe Scholarship Fund, and Edward is honored by the Edward R.
Sanford Astronomy Fund. The Accelerator Lab was named after John
Edwards. Recently, Edwards Scholarships were begun by the John E.
Edwards Fellowship Program to be given to undergraduate physics and
astronomy students.
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- Charles Randall, Jr. (September 12, 1915 - January 29, 2006).
Former friends and colleagues in the Department of Physics and Astronomy
at Ohio University were saddened to learn of the death of Charles A.
Randall on January 29, 2006. Randall was a Fellow on the American
Physical Society and a Fellow and Past-President of the Ohio Academy of
Science. "Charley" Randall was born on September 12, 1915, in Daytona
Beach, Florida. He began his undergraduate studies at Doane College in
Nebraska, then transferred to Kalamozoo College in Michigan, where he
received an A.B. in 1936. He earned an M.A. from Cornell in 1939.
After teaching in various special programs and working for various
defense companies during the war, Charley entered the graduate program
at the University of Michigan in 1946 and received his Ph.D. in 1950
investigating cosmic rays.
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- Charley joined the physics faculty at Ohio University in 1950 as
an Assistant Professor. There he continued his cosmic ray research with
a number of Master's degree students. In 1953 he was promoted to
Associate Professor and in 1956 to Professor. Also in 1956, he was
selected as Chair of the Department, a position he held until 1968.
During his tenure, the faculty numbers grew from 6 to over 20, and under
his leadership the Ohio Board of Regents approved the doctoral program
in physics at Ohio University in 1959. In addition, Charley was
instrumental in building the nuclear physics program at Ohio University
into a nationally-recognized program and assisted in obtaining the 11
MeV van de Graaff grant from the then Atomic Energy Commission and in
the Department of Physics receiving a Research Development Grant from
the NSF. As departmental chair, Randall laid the groundwork for the
development of the current outstanding Department of Physics and
Astronomy at Ohio University, and members of the department are
grateful. He hired many outstanding faculty during his tenure and
helped design the new science research building, Clippinger Research
Laboratories. Despite his heavy administrative load, Charley maintained
an active research career in cosmic ray physics and was an excellent
teacher. In 1969 he was chosen to edit Extra-Terrestrial Matter, the
proceeding of a conference held at Argonne National Laboratory.
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- Professor Randall retired from Ohio University in 1976 and
returned to Florida to be near his extended family. He maintained an
active interest in science and science education for the remainder of
his life.
Postdocs and Visiting Faculty
- We have had in the past year or so at least 12 or more postdocs.
Several visiting faculty have also joined us for various periods of
time.
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- Dr. Lilia Meza-Montes is a visiting scientist from the Institute
of Physics of the University of Puebla in Puebla, Mexico. In this and
previous visits, she does research in theoretical condensed matter
physics. She will spend a year with us sponsored by the Department, the
Nanoscale and Quantum Phenomena Institute, CMSS, and the Women's Study
Program. She holds a Glidden Visiting Professorship.
Updated List of Physics Department Chairs
- In the newsletters for January 1992 and December 1999 (note our
newsletters began in April 1989), we listed the chairs to that time. To
bring the list up-to-date, we include the original lists with additions.
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1) Oscar McClure 1938-1949
2) H. Hewell Roseberry 1949-1951
3) John Edwards 1951-1957
4) Charles Randall 1957-1968
5) James Shipman 1968-1973
6) David Onley 1973-1978
7) Edward Sanford 1978-1990
8) Louis Wright 1990-1997
9) David Onley 1997-1999
10) Louis Wright 1999-2005
11) Joe Shields 2005-present
Staff News
- We have a fine current staff who do their work well and help to
build a strong department. Their contributions are most important to
our success, and we appreciate them.
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- The staff organizes and runs the office, manages the instructional labs,
maintains the personal computers we use and also the computer network, and
runs the shop that builds and maintains our instructional and research
equipment.
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- The change in staff recently was Randy Mulford, who left the
department. He was the supervisor of our department shop. Douglas
Shafer, who worked in the shop, is now the supervisor. Douglas was
joined recently by Jeremy Dennison. Continuing in the electronics shop
is Todd Koren.
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- Ralph Cade, our former shop supervisor, was in Athens in July and
contacted us. He is well and lives in Fort Myers, Florida.
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- Recently, Heather Krugman left the Department to take an
administrative job in our College of Communication. She was our
Department Administrator. We will miss her and her substantial
contribution to the management of the Department.
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