Two of the winners of the Dean's Outstanding Staff Awards are colleagues in the Department of Physics.
Clay Daetwyler of Lecture Demonstration was selected in the non-exempt category. Donna Hammer of MRSEC was selected on the exempt side.
The awards carry a cash value of $1,000 and will be presented at the 21st Annual Spring Academic Festival on Friday, April 24, 2009, at 3:00 p.m., in the Rotunda of the Mathematics Building. Refreshments will be served.
Congratulations to Clay and Donna for this well-earned recognition! And thanks to all the hardworking, dedicated employees who make our Department a wonderful place!
Patrick O’Shea, Physics Affiliate Professor, has been selected as a 2009-2010 Distinguished Scholar-Teacher. This program honors members of the College Park faculty who have demonstrated outstanding scholarly achievement along with equally outstanding accomplishments as teachers. O’Shea is also serving as Chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
James Hubert Blake High School students James Gonzales and James Parker recently became “published” authors in theoretical physics as coauthors of 4D, N = 1 Supersymmetry Genomics (I), which is a mathematically derived supersymetric relationship between specific particles.
Twelve students from Maryland and the University of Iowa cooperated in the research on string theory for two months during the summer. During the first month the students learned advanced math concepts from Dr. Gates and then applied these concepts to their research during the second month.
Both Blake students worked diligently and made a valuable contribution to the research and where the only high school students to coauthor the article. Mr. Parker said “it was a great learning experience to work with Dr. Gates”.
Their paper can be viewed at http://arxiv.org/abs/0902.3830. ArXiv is the premiere website in the world where each day the world’s community of theoretical physicists publicize their work.
Bob was a brilliant physicist and superb administrator. He received his PhD from MIT in 1948, was a postdoc/assistant professor/associate professor at Yale until 1964, and a Professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, as Chair of the Physics Department for 5 years, and Provost until 1975. He was Chancellor here (the same position is called President now) from 1975 to 1982, when he stepped down to return to full-time teaching and research. He did research in many fields, from early work in coulomb scattering, nucleon scattering, relativistic electrodynamics, to more recent work in accelerator theory and non- linear dynamics. As an aside, he was a long time participant in the Maryland Choir. As another aside, Bob once wrote a paper on how to calculate the uncertainties in the measurement of the curvature (and hence the momentum) of charged tracks in magnetic fields due to multiple scattering and measurement errors. This paper had a huge impact in the field of particle physics.
Bob was an extraordinary physicist who had a pure and deep understanding of the material. In the past few years, true to form, Bob played an important role in the Slawsky clinic. He really enjoyed having contact with the students. Indeed, while Chancellor, he was also a TA in Physics and Math (assisting both Jordan Goodman and Vic Korenman). He was a superb teacher and human being to the end, and he fought a hard fight with cancer. We will miss him, his rich New Yawk accent, his good nature, his perspective, his brilliance, and his friendship.
Bob Gluckstern passed away December 17, 2008.