Around_Dept98

INTERACTIONS 1998

Around the Department

The 1997-98 academic year was an active and productive time for your department. We are pleased to present some newsworthy items, a list of honors and awards received by our students, staff and faculty and the names of our recent graduates.

The 1997 Shapley Lecture was presented by Prof. Michael Turner of the University of Chicago and Fermilab on December 2, 1997. Dr. Turner spoke to a large general audience on "The Earliest Moments of Creation: From Quark Soup to the Expanding Universe."

The 1998 Buhl Lecture was held on March 31, 1998 and featured Nobel Laureate T.D. Lee of Columbia University. Professor Lee's talk was titled Symmetries and Asymmetries; he discussed symmetry in historic prospective and pointed out its importance in modern science.

In January, the department hosted a retirement party for Audrey and Ray Sorensen. Many old friends, university faculty and members of the administration attended. Ray hasn't left the university, though; we see him regularly.

The Viper Telescope, designed and constructed by Jeff Peterson and his colleagues, was deployed at the South Pole in December. The group immediately began taking data on the "big bang"remnant cosmic background radiation.

Curtis Meyer and his colleagues hosted a workshop for the users of the electron machine at Jefferson Lab. The workshop (March '98) was titled: Physics with 8+ GeV Photons. The purpose was to look into the future development of experiments with an upgraded machine.

Richard Holman and Robert Nichol and the Carnegie Mellon Astrophysics group hosted the Great Lakes Cosmology Workshop on May 8-9, 1998. The conference focused on developing issues in the measurements of cosmological constants.

The department has hired a new faculty member in experimental condensed matter physics. Dr. James Hannon, formerly of Sandia Lab, joined the department in September 1998. Jim studies the surfaces of metals and semiconductors.

Joe Miller, the departmental electronics technician, has retired. Joe's time with the department dates back to the early days of the Carnegie Tech cyclotron. We thank Joe for his many contributions to education and research and we wish him all the best.

Cheryl Wehrer, our business manager for the past three years, has left us to join the business and finance unit of the university administration to work on the Financial Management Project. New additions to the staff are electronics expert Al Brunk and undergraduate laboratory specialist Tom Whittaker.

The department was fortunate to have two outstanding visiting professors with us for the academic year. Mikkel Johnson, on leave from Los Alamos National Lab, joined Len Kisslinger's research effort and also taught in the undergraduate program. Mikkel is a graduate of our department (Ph.D. 1970). Edwin Taylor, formerly of MIT, was a fellow at the Center for Innovation in Learning and worked extensively with Bruce Sherwood and Ruth Chabay. Taylor is interested in the teaching of quantum mechanics to non-science students. He is the 1998 winner of the Oersted Medal, highest honor of the American Association of Physics Teachers.