PHYSICS Department of Physics Newsletter Summer 2014 Inside this issue: DEPARTMENT WELCOMES TWO NEW PROFESSORS Chair’s Letter 2 Super-TIGER 3 Meteorites 3 Group Reports 4 Redesigned Labs 5 Outreach 6 Saturday Science 8 Faculty News 9 Lecture Series 13 Student News 14 In Memoriam 20 (Continued on page 7) Alumni News 23 Physics from the Ground to Space Erik Henriksen joined the physics faculty as an assistant professor in Fall 2013. Henriksen received his Bachelor of Arts for the double major of Physics and Asian Studies in 1997 from Swarthmore College. After four years working and traveling, he entered Erik Henriksen graduate school at Columbia University to pursue research with Horst Stormer and received his PhD in 2008. He was a postdoc with Jim Eisenstein at Caltech until joining the faculty at WU. Professor Erik Henriksen studies the electronic structure of two-dimensional crystals, particularly graphene. With a laboratory for ultralow temperature (to 10 mK) and high magnetic field (to 14 T) physics currently under construction in the subbasement of Crow, work on these fascinating systems will soon begin. Henriksen is particularly Kater Murch came from University of California – Berkeley to join the physics faculty in January 2014. Here is his description of his background and research: I’m Kater Murch and I joined the Physics Department faculty at Kater Murch Washington University in January. I was actually born here in St. Louis (my mother was a graduate student at Wash U), but we moved away just after my birth, and I never found an occasion to return until last spring. My undergraduate advisor, David Griffiths, (Continued on page 7) Special points of interest: • New Faculty • Super-TIGER broke records • Physics Labs are redesigned • Physics Fun Day • New Minor Digging a foundation for Prof. Henriksen’s new lab. X-Calibur experiment. Goddard Space Flight Center contributes the X-ray telescope, Nagoya University the X-ray mirror, and Washington University the focal plane instrumentation Department of Physics Newsletter Page 2 FROM THE CHAIRPERSON As we come to the end of the 2013-14 academic year, I am happy to report that the physics department continues on a path to excellence. For the first time in several years we have made new faculty hires, and we have plans for further growth in both personnel and operating space. Meanwhile, members of our department have received prestigious awards, made new and exciting research discoveries, and strengthened undergraduate and graduate teaching. In 2013 we were delighted to welcome two new junior professors to the department, Erik Henriksen and Kater Murch. They both work in condensed matter physics, and their arrival builds on the growth in condensed matter theory that we achieved a few years ago, with the hiring of Profs. Zohar Nussinov, Alex Seidel (just promoted to Associate Professor) and Li Yang. With the inauguration of the Institute for Materials Science and Engineering, we now have tremendous momentum in this important area of physics, which combines deep insights into the quantum mechanical behavior of matter with the potential for great technological applications. Undergraduate education is a core mission of our department. The number of students taking our freshman physics course has grown from 500 in 2008 to 700 in 2013-14. This year we hired a new faculty assistant, Drew Osterhout, and completed a total overhaul of the freshman physics labs. This task, led by Kasey Wagoner, Dan Flanagan, and Mairin Hynes, involved the development of a new set of experiments and the reorientation of the laboratory work to a “predict-measure-reassess” philosophy combined with a focus on realworld relevance. The reaction of the first students to take the new lab course has been overwhelmingly positive. We have also seen growth in the number of students majoring or minoring in physics, leveling out at about 25 majors per year in the last few years. Our majors have always been a great source of pride to the department, many of them going on to prominent graduate schools and careers in science and industry. This year we were delighted to have further confirmation of their prowess, when a team of three physics majors, Ryan Endsley, Mark Alford Nathan Stein, and Chair, Department of Physics Christina Kreisch, beat out competition from around the world to win a gold medal in the International University Physics Competition for their analysis of the likely form of life on another planet. The department takes seriously its role in offering non-physics majors the opportunity to appreciate the importance and excitement of physics. As we can see from the success of the “Cosmos” series on broadcast TV, there is a great fascination among the general public with space, the universe, and cosmology. We have therefore started offering a new minor, in Astrophysics and Astroparticle physics. We hope that this will encourage undergraduates who major in other subjects to learn some of the science behind the media presentation of this popular subject. Outreach to the general public is a voluntary but crucial part of our educational mission. Our Saturday Science lecture series, consisting of four lectures per semester, draws hundreds of people from the local community to hear professors talk in layman’s terms about topics ranging from practical applications of academic research to paradoxes and “the physics of things that aren’t there”. The Saturday lectures are organized by Prof. Michael Friedlander, to whom we owe a great debt of thanks for his many contributions to the department spanning the last 58 years. Our Outreach Committee continues to engage with local schools and parents, organizing a semi-regular “Physics Family Fun Day” which now draws around 50 people to the department on a Saturday morning for a hands-on experience of learning and appreciating physics. This success is due to the efforts of Kasey Wagoner and the graduate student members of the committee Rashied Amini, Avery Archer, Adam Archibald, Batoul Banihashemi, Nathan Brown, Tyler Harmon, and Nara Higano, and I hope this tradition of involvement in outreach will continue to flourish in the department. Our faculty have continued to be recognized for their contributions to science. Prof. James Miller received the American Institute for Ultrasound in Medicine’s Joseph H. Holmes Basic Science Pioneer Award, and Prof. Willem Dickhoff was elected to Fellowship of the American Physical Society. Prof. Ramanath Cowsik was installed as the James S. McDonnell Professor of Space Sciences. Prof. Alex Seidel was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor. Our chapter of the Society of Physics Students, run by Prof. Francesc Ferrer, was recognized as a Distinguished SPS Chapter for its involvement in student recruitment and community outreach. On the research side, the Washington-University-led Super-TIGER balloon experiment broke NASA’s record for the longest heavy-lift balloon flight, spending 55 days aloft over Antarctica, detecting rare heavy cosmic rays. We must also note that two valued members of the research faculty have moved on to high-ranking positions elsewhere. Jason Woods was an extraordinarily wide-ranging contributor to the university, performing research in Helium-3 lung imaging and also serving as associate dean and developer of many programs for science majors. He is now director of an imaging center at Children’s Hospital of Cincinnati. Mark Holland, who played a major role in the department’s ultrasound imaging research effort, is now associate research professor and manager of a major imaging research initiative at Indiana University School of Medicine. (Continued on page 13) Summer 2014 Page 3 SUPER-TIGER BROKE THE OFFICIAL NASA BALLOON RECORD A collaboration led by Washington University built a NASA-funded balloon-borne cosmic ray detector called Super-TIGER (Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder). The mission’s goal was to learn more about the origin and history of cosmic rays. Cosmic rays are atomic nuclei that travel through space at almost the speed of light. All the electrons have been stripped away so they are just the bare nuclei. Most cosmic rays are the lightest elements, hydrogen and helium. Super-TIGER was designed to detect the very rare heavy elements, those heavier than iron. Super-TIGER culminates a century of research, with significant contributions by physicists at WUSTL for nearly 70 years. During the summer season in Antarctica of 2012-2013, team members from WUSTL and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) travelled to the continent to finish assembly and prepare for flight. Led by Research Mayor Slay proclaims June 5, 2013 SuperProfessor Robert Binns, the team toiled away at William’s Field on the Ross Ice Shelf from October TIGER day in St. Louis. Richard Bose 29th into December. At 2 AM on December 9th the team headed to the balloon facility for their accepting the plaque for the Washington first launch attempt. The winds were cooperative, and NASA’s Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility University Physics Team. (CSBF) team launched Super-TIGER just before 10 AM. The instrument gracefully ascended to nearly 130,000 feet within a few hours. The balloon expanded to 40 million cubic feet at float altitude. The balloon performed very well, maintaining altitudes between 120,000 and 130,000 feet. Super-TIGER detected over 50 million cosmic rays, including a few thousand heavier than Iron. The Super-TIGER mission lasted over 55 days, shattering the previous NASA record for the longest heavy-lift balloon flight. Electrical Engineer Richard Bose brought a St. Louis flag with him to the Ice. It hung in the payload building. On a bright, windy day it flew outside with Mt. Erebus, a volcano on Ross Island, in the background. The WUSTL ice team members signed the flag. They were Robert Binns, Richard Bose, PostDoctoral Research Associate John E Ward, Electrical Technician Garry Simburger, Mechanical Technician Dana Braun, and Graduate Student Ryan Murphy. Additional WUSTL team members included Professor Martin Israel, Electrical Engineer Paul Dowkontt, Software Engineer Martin Olevitch, Electrical Engineer Phil Moore, and Post-Doctoral Research Associate Brian Rauch. Super-TIGER is a collaboration comprised of Washington University in St. Louis, Goddard Space Flight Center, California Institute of Technology, Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of Minnesota. To find out more about Super-TIGER visit supertiger.wustl.edu and facebook.com/thesupertiger. Meteorite Hunting in Antarctica For several decades the Laboratory for Space Sciences located on the 4th floor of Compton Hall has been studying the early history of our Solar system by analyzing various extraterrestrial materials: lunar rocks, cometary dust and solar wind particles delivered to the Earth by Apollo, Stardust and Genesis NASA missions. Other valuable extraterrestrial materials are meteorites which come from the Asteroid Belt and sometimes from the Moon, Mars and probably even Mercury. Primitive meteorites represent the material of the nascent solar system. For hundreds of these extraterrestrial samples the Laboratory for Space Sciences was their final destination, where they were completely or partially destroyed in the course of isotopic analyses. There is always a need for more meteorites, especially for primitive well-preserved specimens. That is why many members of the laboratory participated in ANSMET (Antarctic Search for meteorites) expeditions which over 30 years found more than 20,000 meteorites in remote areas of the Trans-Antarctic mountains. Alex Meshik (January 2014) holds a small meteorite (with bare hands in Antarctica – must have been a heat wave!). In the past several members and graduates of Physics Department participated in ANSMET expeditions: Robert Walker, Ernst Zinner, Scott Sandford, Mark Caffee, Tim Swindle, Scott Messenger and Larry Nittler. This January the ANSMET expedition found 332 meteorites including a 10-pound iron, several well preserved carbonaceous chondrites and one extremely rare specimen probably from the Moon. It will take many months for the found meteorites to be chemically analyzed, classified and named before they become available for detailed isotopic studies. Page 4 Department of Physics Newsletter GROUP REPORTS The Institute of Materials Science and Engineering interdisciplinary PhD program, expand and administer user facilities for materials processing and characterization, coordinate and provide i n s t i t u t e o f mat er i a ls ng s c i e nmanagement c e & e n g i n e e r isupport for interdisciplinary groups pursuing external funding, and coordinate research and entrepreneurial interactions The discovery of new materials has always gone hand-in-hand with with industry and national facilities. With the completed renovation advances in civilization, with different eras often named by the of approximately 7000 square feet of new space, the IMSE has dominant material of the day, such as the Bronze Age or the Iron approximately 14,000 square feet to house existing and planned Age. Today is no different. New materials are required to address the equipment, personnel and graduate students. The faculty of the IMSE significant challenges facing us, including helping to tap new energy is drawn from participating departments in A&S and SEAS to teach sources, developing machines that use this energy more efficiently, core courses and train graduate students in both basic research and solving environmental concerns. To meet these needs, it is and applied technology. The first PhD class matriculated in August increasingly important that a seamless interface between the basic 2013; offers for positions in the next class were made in early March sciences and engineering disciplines be developed for student training 2014. Over thirty faculty are affiliated with the IMSE. Their research and collaborative research. investigates materials for energy harvesting and storage, environmental In July 2013, in an unprecedented inter-school collaboration between remediation and sustainability, regenerative medicine, plasmonics, Arts & Sciences (A&S) and the School of Engineering and Applied photonics, sensors and imaging, with basic studies of structure, Sciences (SEAS), Washington University established the Institute of properties and phase transitions in complex materials. Materials Science and Engineering (IMSE). Professor Ken Kelton, This is an exciting time, with the IMSE poised to become a significant Department of Physics, was selected as the inaugural Director of the regional center and a national and international leader in materials IMSE; Professor Katherine Flores in the Department of Mechanical science. More information about this new institute can be found at Engineering and Materials Science was selected to serve as the www.imse.wustl.edu. Associate Director. The mission of the IMSE is to administer an An Electrostatic Levitation Facility for Neutron Scattering Studies of Supercooled Liquids Ken Kelton’s Group Although extremely common, liquids and glasses are the least understood phases of condensed matter. For example, it is common knowledge that liquids flow more easily when they become warm, yet why for many liquids the rate of flow (the viscosity) changes so much with small changes in temperature near the point where they become glasses (the glass transition), and what this implies about changing atomic structures in the liquids are unclear. Since most materials become liquid only at high temperatures, and since they often react strongly with containers, it is difficult to design experiments that can provide insight into these questions. For several years, Kelton’s research group has been studying supercooled metallic liquids in a high-vacuum, containerless, environment, using an electrostatic levitation facility that they designed and constructed. Their synchrotron scattering studies studies have demonstrated the development of icosahedral shortrange order in the liquid with decreasing temperature, which has a significant impact on the liquid properties and on glass formation. They find hints that chemical ordering accompanies the structural ordering. Recently, they discovered that the dynamical processes that eventually lead to the glass transition are linked to the onset of cooperative motion in the liquid that occurs at a much higher temperature, Tcoop. By determining Tcoop from viscosity measurements at high temperature, they are able to accurately predict the glass transition temperature. The NESL (center/back) at the SNS on the VULCAN beam-line, with the investigators involved in its design, construction and testing. From left to right: Dante Quirinale (ISU), Adam Vogt (WU), Gus Rustan (ISU), Kevin Derendorf (WU), Mark Johnson (WU), Konstantin Lokshin (JINS), Ken Kelton (WU, PI, Principle Investigator), Takeshi Egami (JINS, Co-PI), Nick Mauro (WU) and Ke An (SNS). ISU – Iowa State University; WU – Washington University. (Photo by Genevieve Martin/ORNL). Elastic and inelastic neutron scattering experiments are needed to shed more light on the nature of the chemical ordering and dynamical processes. Supported by an NSF-MRI grant, Kelton’s group has spent the past three years designing and building a novel electrostatic levitation facility for use at the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS), the most intense pulsed neutron source on Earth, located at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in eastern Tennessee. The very high (Continued on page 19) Summer 2014 Page 5 INTRODUCTORY PHYSICS LABS REDESIGNED Over the last 18 months Dan Flanagan, Kasey Wagoner, and Mairin Hynes have overhauled the labs associated with the introductory physics courses (117-118 and 197-198) resulting in a new set of experiments starting this spring. The aim is to make the experiments more engaging, relevant to class and the students’ lives, and inquiry based. In 2010 the physics department, led by Becky Trousil, was awarded a grant from Howard Hughes Medical Institute to overhaul the introductory labs with the purpose of making the experiments inquiry based. To meet the goals of this funding, the new labs take a “predictmeasure-reassess” approach. The aim is to have students make predictions which can be verified or discredited by an experiment. After making a prediction, students perform an experiment and use the outcome to reassess their original prediction. The primary motivation for updating the content of the labs has been “You feel more to closely tie the experiments to accomplished when the world in which the students you see your encounter every day in the hopes of piquing their natural curiosity. In one ideas work.” new experiment, each student builds a speaker and then employs this speaker to test the relationship between a current carrying coil of wire and the magnetic field it produces. In another interesting example, students investigate the spectrum of frequencies of a note they sing to decide whether or not their voice should be “Auto-tuned.” In addition to changing the content of the labs, the style of the lab manual has been revamped. The previous lab manuals were a constant source of confusion for the students doing the labs and for the TAs administering them. Incorporating comments from TAs has led to new lab manuals that make clear exactly what is expected of the students. Additionally, each manual has a section with a brief history of the experiment and a story about the lab exercise to be carried out. The history and story put the upcoming exercises in context, either providing an interesting fact or showing the students the applicability of the experiments they are performing. For example, in the history portion of the DC Motors lab the students are taken back in time to when the mullet haircut was stylish and a television show named McGyver showed how a man could use his knowledge of physics to create a motor out of a coffee cup, magnet, and piece of wire. Lab manager Dan Flanagan and lab assistant, undergraduate Allison Zastrow, work with a DC motor Allison constructed, trying to find exactly how fast the rotor is spinning. This semester students are performing nine experiments, compared to the six experiments per semester they had been doing over the past four years. This increase was facilitated by the renovation of Crow 311, 314, and 316 which was completed in the spring of 2012. This renovation allowed for an increase in the number of students in each lab and a decrease in the number of necessary lab sections. These changes provided the scheduling flexibility needed to insure that the lab schedule correlates with the class schedule. Additionally the changes provided the time necessary to cover additional topics (such as electrostatics, magnetism, and entropy) which hadn’t been covered in many years. Two of the new labs were tested during the summer term of 2013, receiving overwhelmingly positive response. One student commented, “These labs are so much better! I understand more and they are a lot more straightforward.” Another wrote, “I enjoy being able to figure out how to make things without it being laid out perfectly for you. You feel more accomplished when you see your ideas work.” With comments like these it appears that the new labs are taking positive steps forward. New Minor in Astrophysics and Astroparticle Physics Reflecting the strength of the Physics Department in the area of astrophysics and particle physics, the department is now offering a minor in Astrophysics and Astroparticle Physics. The minor will allow students to get a good overview of astronomy and astrophysics and/ or astroparticle physics and the current topics of research in these areas. Traditionally, the field of astronomy consists of observing celestial phenomena. Astrophysics deals with observing celestial phenomena and explaining them based on physical laws and/or deriving new physical laws with the help of celestial phenomena. Astro-particle physics is a more recent development and uses the cosmos as a laboratory for doing particle physics and for testing and expanding particle physics theories. The minor includes a solid foundation in freshman and sophomore physics (General Physics I & II or Physics I & II), an Introduction to Quantum Physics, and an overview of the field of astrophysics and the theoretical and experimental methods astrophysicists use. In addition, the minor requires taking at least two of the following six electives: Introduction to Quantum Physics II, Galactic Astrophysics, Introduction to Nuclear & Particle Physics From Black Holes to the Big Bang, Stellar Astrophysics, and X-ray and Gamma Ray Astrophysics. Department of Physics Newsletter Page 6 FUN OF PHYSICS BROUGHT TO ST. LOUIS 2013-2014 has been another productive year for the Physics Outreach Committee. With a variety of activities, the wonders of physics have been brought to many in the St. Louis area. Children and their parents play with paper cup telephones they have built at our most recent Physics Family Fun Day. In 2009 we started a program called Physics Family Fun Day! which seeks to bring local families to our department, showing them the joy and excitement of physics. Unlike many outreach programs which emphasize providing students with lab experience or additional resources for learning, Family Fun Days look to spark the natural curiosity of children to interest them in the subject. Each day is a series of demonstrations and activities centered on a unifying theme. The two-hour-long events contain one hour of demonstrations and a second hour of hands on activities. In the past we have hosted Fun Days focusing on topics such as Heat and Temperature and Electricity and Magnets. Our last event on March 1, 2014 was the most successful to date with over 50 students having fun with Waves. Moving forward, our next Physics Family Fun Day will explore outer space! On April 27, 2013 the Physics Department hosted 75 area high-school students for the 28th annual St. Louis Area Physics Teachers High School Physics Contest. Every year the competition is comprised of a pair of exams for high school students. The competition gives local students the chance to assess how their physics knowledge stacks up against others from the area. Each student chooses to take one of the two exams. One exam covers mechanics and the other covers all topics discussed in a college, freshman-level course. To capitalize on the success of the 2013 event, we are expanding the scope for 2014. On April 26, 2014 we will host the 29th annual contest, adding a time for demonstrations and lab tours to the schedule. P h y s i c s Fa m i ly Fun Days look to spark the natural curiosity o f s t u d e n t s. . . In addition to these regular events, members of the Outreach Committee have participated in multiple onetime events such as trips to area schools and science fairs. If you are interested in learning more about physics outreach, volunteering for, or participating in one of our events please contact us at outreach@physics. wustl.edu. Or you can check out more at http://physics.wustl.edu/outreach. Children and their parents investigate interference of sound waves emanating from two speakers in Crow 205. The families had come to the physics department for a Physics Family Fun Day on March 1, 2014. Summer 2014 Page 7 SIMS LABORATORY DEDICATED Washington University in St. Louis recently hosted a gathering to dedicate the laboratory space for a fabulous new analytical instrument, naming it for the family whose gift funded the build-out. The Grossman Family SIMS Laboratory houses the Cameca SIMS ims7f-geo, a state-of-the-art secondary-ion mass spectrometer tailored for the analysis of geological samples. In a sense, the SIMS is just a microscope, not unlike the ones in high school biology labs, but it is a microscope so powerful it lets scientists “see” the chemical composition of samples no bigger than a red blood cell. The SIMS is a versatile instrument, and a quarter of its time will be available to members of the Institute of Materials Science and Engineering (IMSE), directed by Kenneth Kelton, to study problems in the design and processing of materials. Established in July 2013, IMSE will foster a culture of interdisciplinary materials science research and education at the university. The IMSE’s user facilities in Rudolph Hall eventually will house a suite of instruments for materials characterization, from workhorses of materials science to state-of-the-art equipment with dedicated faculty. (Continued on page 27) Erik Henriksen (Continued from page 1) interested in exploring the physics of interacting electrons in two dimensions, as well as the new field of topological electronic structure that has grown out of graphene research. In order to study these systems, very clean and high quality devices are required and toward this end Henriksen and his group will begin fabricating custom microscopic devices from single-atom-thick flakes of graphene, boron nitride, and black phosphorous, among a whole host of materials that can be exfoliated to nanometer-thick films. Henriksen’s lab will include the equipment necessary to build custom stacks of 2D sheets into a novel quasi-three dimensional material with properties that are a hybrid of the constituent sheets; this is expected to be a fertile playground for both materials physics and fundamental science of interacting electrons. Graphene’s unique quasi-relativistic band structure has already provided experimental confirmation of relativistic effects like the Klein paradox that are not accessible by traditional high energy physics approaches. Perhaps more important was the theoretical discovery of topological electronic structure in graphene, in which the bulk of the material is an electrical insulator but the edges maintain conducting channels. While experimental studies of these systems are largely in 3D materials, Henriksen is interested in revisiting the issue in graphene to develop 2D versions of topological materials. Such systems may allow for new routes toward controlling electronic spin degrees of freedom for new technologies for computers, or even make possible topological approaches to quantum computation. Previously Henriksen has developed the techniques for measuring infrared absorption in samples only microns in size and one atom thick in experiments carried out at the National High Magnetic Field Lab in Tallahassee, FL, a unique resource that lab members will continue to visit. Meanwhile, the infrared techniques developed there will soon be re-created here with an eye toward refining the method and improving the resolution and range of applicable temperatures. A long term goal will be to extend infrared spectroscopy to milliKelvin temperatures to provide new probes for delicate many-body states. Kater Murch (Continued from page 1) pushed me in the direction of quantum science when I graduated from Reed College and was preparing to head to graduate school. Struck by the beauty of table-top experiments that probe fundamental questions, I took his advice and joined Dan Stamper-Kurn’s atomic physics lab at UC Berkeley. I spent 5 years studying some of the coldest stuff in the universe, pushing it around in circles, zapping it with lasers, and ultimately realizing the rudiments of a Heisenberg microscope-showing that when you try to measure the position of an object, the particle nature of photons necessarily disturbs its momentum. As a postdoc (also at Berkeley) I learned how to fabricate tiny circuits out of superconducting materials that ultimately exhibit some of the same quantum properties as individual atoms. These artificial atoms (often referred to as superconducting qubits) turn out to be fantastic systems for the same kinds of table-top fundamental physics experiments that originally drew me to atomic physics. Because these systems are quantum mechanical, they can exist in “I spent a coherent superposition of their two states. Textbook quantum mechanics 5 years tells us that if we were to measure this s t u dy i n g s o m e superposition the wave function would of the coldest collapse yielding one or the other state probabilistically. We were able stuff in the to use weak measurements to slow universe…” this process down and literally watch the wave function collapse in real time. Here at Washington University, my group and I are eager to set up our lab to continue to explore these sorts of fundamental questions and to apply our knowledge of quantum measurement to broader areas such as precision measurement and biology. Department of Physics Newsletter Page 8 SATURDAY SCIENCE The Department’s popular Saturday morning lectures started in 1994 with four lectures on the Bizarre Legacy of Einstein. Since our last Newsletter, we have had four series of lectures, and almost all seats are taken each week, in Crow 201 – The Arthur L Hughes Lecture Room. Fall 2012: Cosmic Rays: A Century of Discoveries In 1912, Victor Hess discovered that a penetrating radiation was coming from outside the Earth’ atmosphere and was affecting sensitive electrical apparatus. The particle nature of this radiation was established by the mid-1930s. During the next twenty years, new sub-atomic particles were discovered, laying the foundation for the now-vast research area known as ‘particle physics’, exemplified by LHC. By now, the central focus of cosmic rays research has shifted and constitutes a vigorous part of modern astrophysics. Research is conducted underground, at high altitudes with balloons and with satellites above the Earth’s atmosphere. Cosmic ray studies have shown connections with the observations of exploding stars, gamma ray bursts and radio astronomy. Michael Friedlander: Cosmic Rays: New Particles and Unexpected Applications Robert Binns: Using Gigantic High-altitude Balloons to Study Cosmic Rays James Buckley: High Energy Cosmic Gamma Rays Martin Israel: The Abundances of Different Nuclei among the Cosmic Rays Ramanath Cowsik: How can Cosmic Rays be Accelerated? Spring 2013: Paradoxes In thinking about science and mathematics we are sometimes led to a paradox, that is a seemingly absurd or contradictory conclusion. Paradoxes are good because they force us to discover the defect in our reasoning, and when we resolve a paradoxical conclusion, we deepen our understanding of the natural world. In these lectures, we examine some of famous and fascinating paradoxes. Carl Bender: Paradoxes in Science and Mathematics Michael Ogilvie: Fermi’s Paradox: From Certainty to Chaos and Back Sgain John S. Rigden: Schrodinger and his Cat Kasey Wagoner: Relativity: Does the Pole Fit in the Barn or Not? Fall 2013: From the Ivory Tower to the Market Place Much of the scientific research carried out in universities is driven by curiosity. What are the properties of sub-atomic particles? What happen when atomic nuclei are made to collide at the speed of light? What happens when a liquid is cooled to temperatures far below freezing? How accurately does a theory predict the outcome of experiments? How does general relativity provide the foundation for GPS ? We will describe examples of the ways in which basic research has, quite unexpectedly, moved from the ivory tower and been adapted to practical uses that have created major industries. ‘Pure’ research often has important but unpredictable applications. Patrick Gibbons: Electronic Transitions in Atoms and Molecules: From Fundamental Physics to Modern Time and Frequency Standards James G. Miller: Ultrasonics: Evolution from Basic Science to Clinical Medicine Stuart A. Solin: The Impact of Condensed Matter Physics on Technology Francesc Ferrer: Navigating through spacetime with the GPS Spring 2014: Earth, Air, Fire and Water What is our universe made of? Over the centuries, speculation and experiment have led us to a model of the basic constituents of the Earth and its inhabitants, the Sun and the planets, distant stars and galaxies. Some of the fundamental components such as atoms and electrons are made visible through ingenious experiments. Atoms are the basic components of all matter; atoms can combine to produce molecules or heavier atoms, but electrons do not combine. The forces in nature cannot be seen directly but make their presence felt at every stage and on every scale. We detect them indirectly by the effects they produce. Light and other electromagnetic radiations were thought to travel through an ‘ether’ (invisible, infinitely thin) – but this failed to be detected, which led to a deeper understanding of nature. Four lectures cannot cover even a small fraction of these subjects. What we will do is to introduce you to some of the concepts, and identify some of the building blocks out of which we have constructed a consistent picture of the universe. And on the fifth day we will rest. Michael Friedlander: Bits and Pieces: Electrons, Nuclei and other spare parts Carl Bender: The physics of things that aren’t there John S. Rigden: The Atom, Then and Now Martin Israel: We Are Stardust – where most of the atoms in our bodies come from Summer 2014 Page 9 FACULTY AWARDS & RECOGNITION Ramanath Cowsik was installed as the James S. McDonnell Professor of Space Sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis at an October 7 ceremony in Holmes Lounge, Ridgley Hall. Cowsik’s contributions to neutrino physics and to understanding dark matter in the universe have earned him international recognition, said Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton in his opening remarks. Willem Dickhoff was elected to Fellowship in the American Physical Society at its November 2013 meeting upon the recommendation of the Division of Nuclear Physics. The citation reads: “For development and application of the self-consistent Green’s function method for attacking the nuclear many-body problem, yielding fundamental insights into the roles of nuclear correlations in experimentally accessible observables.” Professor Willem Dickhoff also has received a three-year grant from the NSF for research titled “Green’s Functions and the Nuclear Many-Body Problem.” Prof. Emeritus Patrick Gibbons received the 2014 Gerry and Bob Virgil Ethic of Service Award, an annual award recognizing a select group of WUSTL community members who exemplify a character of service and contribution to the St. Louis region. Prof. James G. Miller received the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine’s 2014 Joseph H. Holmes Basic Science Pioneer Award, awarded annually to “an individual who has significantly contributed to the growth and development of medical ultrasound”. More details are available on the department website: http://end.physics.wustl.edu/ fac/2014AIUMAwardJamesGMiller.pdf Alexander Seidel was promoted to the rank of associate professor. FACULTY NEWS Carl Bender published ten research papers in 2013. His principal research activity for the past year has been on PT-symmetric quantum mechanics, although he published several papers in areas unrelated to PT quantum mechanics in the past year as well. Although he is a theorist, one of his 2013 papers reports on an experiment that he performed in London and in 2014 he will publish a second experimental paper in Nature Physics on PT-symmetric optical whispering-gallery resonators (as of this writing, this paper is currently in press). The field of PT symmetric quantum mechanics, which he originated in 1998, has become highly active; in the latest issue of Physical Review A there were seven papers on PT symmetry! During the summer of 2014 there will be four international conferences on PT-symmetric quantum mechanics; these conferences will be held in Jerusalem (Israel), University of Connecticut, University of Cambridge (UK), and University of Setif (Algeria). Professor Bender is on the organizing committee for two of these conferences. In addition, conferences in Palermo and London are currently being organized for 2015. A number of special journal issues on the subject are in preparation and Imperial Col- lege Press has invited Prof. Bender to write a book on the subject. He expects to complete this book during the summer of 2014. Prof. Bender has maintained numerous connections with European universities. He is an International Professor at Heidelberg University and in October 2013 he gave 15 hours of heavily attended lectures on PTsymmetric quantum mechanics in the space of one week. He is also a Visiting Professor at City University in London, Imperial College London, and King’s College London. He is an Associate Member of the Higgs Centre at the University of Edinburgh and an International Member of the London Physical Society. In 2013 Prof. Bender was awarded a Royal Society two-year travel grant to visit the UK. Prof. Bender has presented numerous invited seminars and colloquia. In January 2013 and in March 2014 he presented the prestigious Maxwell Lecture at King’s College London. He gave colloquia at Northwestern University and the University of Montana (April 2013), City University London (June 2013 and January 2014), the Higgs Centre (August 2013), the University of Delaware (November 2013) (two talks), and Imperial College London (March 2014) (two talks). He gave a seminar in the Mathematics Department at Washington University in April 2014. He also gave invited plenary talks at international conferences at Yale University (February 2013), Paris (June 2013), Istanbul (July 2013), Miami (December 2013), and Edinburgh (January 2014). He gave a public talk in the Saturday Science series organized by Prof. Friedlander at Washington University in April 2013 and presented another talk in this series in April 2014. WUSTL mathematicians: (from left) Alan Talmage, Stephen Rong, Jason Zhang, Yu Tao Li, Fangzhou Xiao and Anthony Grebe. Prof. Bender continues to coach the Putnam team and organizes practice sessions for students who are planning to take the Putnam Examination. These sessions meet once a week for two hours and last for the entire fall term. Every spring term he continues to chair the committee that selects students to (Continued on page 10) Department of Physics Newsletter Page 10 FACULTY NEWS (Faculty News continued from page 9) Prof. Ferrer also recently worked with Vachaspati and Tashiro at Arizona State and WU graduate student Wenlei Chen on the possible detection of magnetic helicity using the diffuse cosmological background. A paper has been submitted for publication. be Compton Fellows. In December 2013, the WUSTL team, consisting of sophomore Anthony Grebe, junior Patrick Lopatto and freshman Jongwhan Park, placed 10th out of 430 teams. Prof. Bender is also organizing the “Clark Fest” in honor of Prof. John Clark, a very distinguished and senior member (in fact, the dean, in the sense of having been a member longer than anyone else) of our Department. It will take place on April 27-28, 2015. Prof. Jonathan Katz continued his research in several areas. He developed a model of the recently discovered cosmological “Fast Radio Bursts”, describing their emission regions as a screen of maximally efficient dipole radiators, and inferring relativistic energies for the particles doing the radiation: The brightness and intensity are literally “astronomical” and require coherent emission by bunches of charges, and relativistic energy is required to overcome the repulsion of like charges. Francesc Ferrer, together with Cliff Will and Laleh Sadeghian (who recently received her Ph.D. in our Department and started a postdoctoral position at University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee) calculated the effects of the super-massive black hole at the center of the Galaxy on the distribution of dark matter. The results, published in Physical Review D, are important for the indirect detection of dark matter and for tests of the no-hair theorem of general relativity. He continued, in collaboration with WU (class of 2013) undergraduate Thomas Muschinski and Departmental Ph.D. alumna Lilly Canel, studies of trends in storminess in historic climate records. A preliminary study of 13 sites in the 48 contiguous United States found a significant increase in storminess over the period 1950-1998 at one site on the Olympic Peninsula with very calm weather; this was reported in a paper published in Nature Climate Change. Subsequent study of data from several thousand sites found little significant trend; these data are still being With his student Daniel Hunter, he published a paper in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, studying the phasespace distribution of dark matter in the Milky Way halo. The distribution is required to correctly predict the annihilation fluxes in dark matter models with so called Sommerfeld enhancement, and that have been discussed in recent years as a possible explanation of the rising positron fraction observed by the cosmic ray experiments PAMELA and AMS-02. Prof. Katz also continued, in collaboration with undergraduates Hannah Sieber, Clarence Chu and Chiamaka Asunigo, volunteer Joel Groman, and Prof. Miller’s ultrasound group, a study of the rheology of corn starch suspensions. Their famous shear thickening can be attributed to jamming of the starch grains, and this work led to the discovery of several novel phenomena, such as stick-slip friction in the thickened state and transient thickening in the unthickened state. A theoretical model of the thickening transition was developed that explains why suspensions of starch in oil do not thicken. A byproduct of this work was a novel explanation of the nearly ubiquitous phenomenon of shear thinning in suspensions. Professors Henric Krawczynski and Matthias Beilicke are working towards flying a 10m focal length X-ray telescope on a stratospheric balloon flight from Fort Sumner (NM) in Fall 2014. Krawczynski and Beilicke are interested in black holes because they are NormedWindowed 2nd Moment 11 years ending Year 2003 50 45 40 Latitude Also on the dark matter problem, he took part in a study with Lawrence Krauss’ group at Arizona State University of the sensitivity of a multi-ton liquid xenon and argon direct dark matter detector. This is part of the preliminary survey for the DARWIN consortium. The present design calls for a 20 ton detector that should be able to detect dark matter particles with annihilation cross-sections as small as 10-47 cm2. This is three orders of magnitude below the current best results and at the limit where the irreducible neutrino background kicks in. analyzed. One product of this study was the storminess map shown in the accompanying figure. The highest storminess indices are found in desert sites whose rain falls in rare thunderstorms, intermediate values are found in the Southeast and high Plains, and smaller values in humid regions, with the very smallest in the Pacific Northwest. Bin 1 613 stations insufficient data 35 Bin 2 <20.0000 2.0 percentile Bin 3 <40.0000 8.4 percentile Bin 4 <50.0000 14.4 percentile Bin 5 <60.0000 24.6 percentile Bin 6 <75.0000 40.7 percentile Bin 7 <100.0000 60.8 percentile Bin 8 <150.0000 81.7 percentile 30 Bin 9 <175.0000 88.5 percentile Bin 10 <200.0000 92.7 percentile Bin 11 <250.0000 97.1 percentile Bin 12 <300.0000 98.7 percentile Bin 13 <600.0000 99.9 percentile 25 −130 Bin 14 <2400.0000 100.0 percentile −120 Storminess in the 1990’s −110 −100 Longitude −90 −80 −70 (Continued on page 11) −60 Summer 2014 Page 11 FACULTY NEWS (Faculty News continued from page 10) the places in the universe where spacetime exhibits the most extreme curvature, as predicted by Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. Black holes can readily be observed if they are in a close binary orbit with a companion star. Matter from the companion star that falls into a black hole warms up so much that it emits in the X-ray energy range shortly before being swallowed by the black hole. Because X-rays are absorbed by Earth’s atmosphere, one needs to lift the X-ray telescopes above the atmosphere - either with balloons, sounding rockets, or on a satellite. Krawczynski and Beilicke are using a novel detector assembly (called X-Calibur, see photo on cover page) that allows them to measure for the first time the polarization of the X-rays. The polarization carries geometrical information about how the matter flows into the black hole. The scientific aim of the first balloon flight is to constrain the properties of the “accretion disk corona”, hot gas thought to form above and below the matter falling into the black hole, which is energized by magnetic fields that build up in the disk owing to turbulent plasma motion. Krawczynski and Beilicke obtained NASA funding for a first (1-day) balloon flight and for a longer (~30-day) follow-up flight from McMurdo (Antarctica). The second flight will allow them to observe not only galactic stellar mass black holes but also extragalactic supermassive black holes. The former are typically ten times more massive than the sun. The latter have masses of a few million to a billion solar masses. Washington University leads the X-Calibur collaboration which includes scientists from the Goddard Space Flight Center and the Brookhaven National Laboratory. In mid-March 2014 Jim Schilling gave a plenary talk at a two-day workshop on “Matter under Extreme Conditions” at the Brazilian synchrotron in Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil, where one of our department’s current graduate students, Gilberto Fabbris, did his Master’s Thesis research. A much larger synchrotron is currently under construction in Campinas. Jim met with scientists from Brazil, Germany, and the US, including Dan Haskel, a senior scientist at the APS synchrotron in the Argonne National Labs; Dan is also an Adjunct Professor in our department. Jim also spent a day in the city of São Paulo with former WU grad student Saeed Mirshekari (see photo below), who completed his PhD with Cliff Will. Saeed is a postdoc in São Paulo at the ICTP South American Institute for Fundamental Research (ICTP-SAIFR). Saeed Mirshekari and Jim Schilling Postdoc Neda Foroozani in Schilling’s group attended the recent 2014 March Meeting of the American Physical Society in Denver, Colorado, and gave two oral presentations on her recent research results. She also met with other panel members for the “Biruni Award” of the Iranian American Physicists (IrAP) Network Group (see photo below). This group promotes and recognizes outstanding research by physics graduate students with Iranian heritage who are currently studying in one of the institutions of higher education in the US. In November 2013, Schilling drove up to Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, to give, together with George Schmiedeshoff, a joint colloquium in honor of the 90th birthday of Clayton Swenson, a distinguished scientist in the ISU Physics Department. In July 2013, Jim and members of his group (Neda Foroozani, Gilberto Fabbris, and Isaiah Lim) attended the AIRAPT high-pressure conference in Seattle, Washington. Two oral presentations and one poster presentation were given on the students’ current research results. Jim had been the AIRAPT Treasurer for 6 years, the maximum term. At this meeting he was elected member of the AIRAPT Executive Committee. At the end of May 2013, Schilling flew to Munich, Germany, where he had been a faculty member for nearly five years before joining the physics department at WU in 1990. During his one-month stay in Germany he visited research groups in Leipzig, Dresden, and Karlsruhe where he gave seminars on the topic “Pressure-Induced Electron Localization/Delocalization Effects in Alkali Metals and Rare-Earth Metals”. In March 2013, Jim gave an invited talk at the international conference on “Studies of Matter under Extreme Conditions” in Miami, Florida, on the same topic as above in Germany. In September 2012, Schilling visited Cornell University and gave an invited seminar on “Some Recent Results in Magnetism and Superconductivity at High Pressure”. He visited with Richard Hennig, a former student of Anders Carlsson and Ken Kelton, as well as with the well-known scientists Neil Ashcroft and Roald Hoffmann, both of whom, on Jim’s initiative, came to our department and gave a colloquium talk. (Continued on page 12) Department of Physics Newsletter Page 12 FACULTY VISITORS Prof. Bender is hosting three visitors, Prof. Naomichi Hatano,University of Tokyo, Japan, visiting as the Clark Way Harrision Visiting Professor; and two visiting collaborators, Dr. Mariagiovanna Gianfreda, University of Lecce, Italy, funded by a Della Riccia grant and Dr. Ananya Ghatak, Banaras Hindu University, funded by a grant from the American Physical Society. Mariagiovanna Gianfreda, Naomichi Hatano, and Ananya Ghatak Prof. Murch, our newest faculty member, was the host of Prof. Andrew Jordan of the University of Rochester as part of their continuing experimental and theoretical research on quantum measurement. This resulted in a paper, Mapping the optimal route between two quantum states, http://lanl.arxiv.org/pdf/1403.4992.pdf. The low-energy nuclear physics group (Dickhoff, Sarantites, Sobotka, Reviol, and Charity) recently hosted visits by Dr. Zbigniew Chajecki (National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory, Michigan State University), Professor Ingo Wiedenhoever (Department of Physics, Florida State University), Dr. Charles Horowitz (Center for Exploration of Energy and Matter and Physics Department, Indiana University), Dr. Jan Tõke (University of Rochester), Professor Umesh Garg (University of Notre Dame), Professor Morten Hjorth-Jensen (National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory at Michigan State University and Department of Physics, University of Oslo), Professor Dirk Rudolph (Department of Physics, Lund University, Sweden), Professor Anatoli Afanasjev (Mississippi State University), Professor Jeff Tostevin (NSCL Michigan State University and University of Surrey, Guildford, UK), and Professor Peter Schuck (Institut de Physique Nucléaire, France; Université Paris-Sud, Orsay, France). Prof. Henriksen hosted Yafis Barlas, a condensed matter theorist from University of California - Riverside and David Abergel, a condensed matter theorist from Nordita. Both are well-known in the graphene community for their contributions to understanding the electronic structure of graphenes. Dr. Schilling hosted visiting Assistant Professor Takahiro Matsuoka from Osaka University in Japan. Dr. Zinner hosted two visitors, Dr. Marco Pignatari (University of Basel, Switzerland) and Dr. Manavi Jadhav (University of Hawaii, Honolulu). (Faculty News continued from page 11) In January, Ernst Zinner with colleagues Kevin Croat, Frank Gyngard, Alex Meshik and Olga Pravdivtseva and graduate students Evan Groopman, Pierre Haenecour, Joben Lewis and Wei Jia Ong attended the annual Workshop on Presolar Grains at the University of Chicago. For more than a decade this workshop has alternated between Washington University and Clemson University, but has recently also included the University of Chicago and the Carnegie Institution in Washington DC. After the workshop, Dr. Marco Pignatari from the University of Basel, Switzerland visited for a week, and he and Zinner wrote a paper reporting the discovery of yet another shortlived isotope, 32Si, in presolar SiC grains. In May, Zinner spent a week as invited guest lecturer at the University of Grenada, Spain and attended the 6th International Conference on Nuclear Physics in Astrophysics in Lisbon, Portugal, where he delivered a keynote address. He also presented a talk at the 76th Annual Meeting of the Meteoritical Society in Edmonton, Canada. Mark Holland, formerly Associate Research Professor, is currently an Associate Research Professor of Radiology & Imaging Sciences at the Indiana University School of Medicine (IUSM) in Indianapolis. Furthermore, he serves as the Manager of the Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis (IUPUI) Imaging Research Initiative. In this capacity, he works closely with the Imaging Research Initiative Leadership Council, through the IUPUI Office of the Vice Chancellor of Research, to facilitate programmatic goals, foster collaborations among imaging investigators, and help identify potential government, corporate, foundation and other sources of extramural funding for imaging-related research throughout the University. In addition to his Imaging Research Initiative responsibilities, Holland continues to be active in ultrasound imaging research and provides educational support in the physics of ultrasound imaging to the IUPUI and IUSM research communities. Jason Woods, Honorary Adjunct Professor of Physics, is now at Children’s Hospital of Cincinnati. He directs an imaging center there and will be directly involved in developing laser-polarized helium-3 and xenon gases for imaging of lungs in children, including prematurely born neonates. He continues to supervise some Washington University Physics graduate students. Summer 2014 Page 13 MCDONNELL CENTER FOR THE SPACE SCIENCES Distinguished Lecture Series 2013 McDonnell Lecture 2014 McDonnell Lecture Robert M. Walker Lecture The 2013 McDonnell Distinguished Lecturer was Professor Thomas Bernatowicz, Department of Physics, Washington University in St. Louis. Bernatowicz delivered a public lecture on April 10, “Stardust in the Laboratory” and a colloquium on April 11, “Constraints on Grain Formation Around Carbon Stars From Laboratory Studies of Presolar Graphite.” The 2014 McDonnell Distinguished Lecturer was Professor Alex Halliday, FRS, University of Oxford. Halliday delivered a public lecture on March 5, “The Origin of the Earth and Moon” and a colloquium on March 6, “The origin of Earth’s volatiles.” Professor Shrinivas Kulkarni, McArthur Professor of Astronomy & Planetary Science, California Institute of Technology delivered a colloquium, “There Is More Room Sideways” and a public lecture on November 7, 2013, “Booms, Burps & Bumps: The Dynamic Universe.” Feenberg Lecture Professor Douglas J. Scalapino, University of California-Santa Barbara delivered the Feenberg Lecture colloquium on April 2, 2014, “A Common Thread: the Pairing Interaction in the Unconventional Superconductors” The lattice structures, the phase diagrams, and a neutron scattering resonance indicative of an unconventional superconducting state provide evidence of a strong relationship between cuprate, Fe-pnictide/chalcogen, and heavy-fermion superconductors. Following a review of such experimental evidence, we introduce and discuss the spin-fluctuation pairing interaction which we believe to be responsible for pairing and superconductivity in this broad class of materials, providing the common thread linking them. (Chair’s Letter continued from page 2) The department’s staff are crucial to the success of the department and some of them are among the longest-serving members of the department. Scott Handley received the university’s Outstanding Staff Award for his invaluable work in two critical areas of the department: he is both the advanced lab coordinator and the web page implementer. Richard Bose, an engineer in the astrophysics group, took a Saint Louis City flag to Antarctica, and was rewarded by mayor Francis Slay with the “keys to the city”. This year we honored five people for their years of service. In 2013 we honored Rich Schmaeng, who has been in the physics department for 40 years, performing many different functions, from assembling freshman physics experiments to managing the departments network infrastructure. We cannot know what transformations the next 40 years will bring, but just looking ahead a few years there are great indications of renewal and growth in the physics department. There will be a wave of retirements, and we consequently expect to be hiring many new faculty members. There are tentative plans for a new wing to be built, connecting the Compton and Crow buildings, and closing off our central courtyard into a covered atrium. Such a major construction project brings challenges and extraordinary opportunities. We look forward to the fruition of these plans in the coming years. Mark Alford Chair, Department of Physics alford@wustl.edu Department of Physics Newsletter Page 14 STUDENT NEWS Graduate Students The following students have received their PhD degrees. Their thesis titles, faculty advisors and current position (if known) are listed as well. Nilushi Dasanayake, “Actomyosin Contractility in Nonmuscle Cells”, February 1, 2013 (Professor Carlsson) Narelle J. Hillier, “High Pressure Studies of Superconductivity”, February 22, 2013 (Professor Schilling) Truman State University (Temporary Assistant Professor) James C. Bendert, “Thermophysical and Structural Measurements of Liquid Metallic Alloys Using Electrostatic Levitation”, April 9, 2013 (Professor Kelton) Intel Corporation (Process Engineer) Shouting Huang, “Electronic, Optical, and Thermal Properties of Reduced-Dimensional Semiconductors”, May 13, 2013 (Professor Yang) CGG (Seismic Imaging Engineer) Saeed Mirshekari, “Gravitational Waves and Inspiralling Compact Binaries in Alternative Theories of Gravity”, May 16, 2013 (Professor Will) ICTP-SAIFR – São Paulo, Brazil – (Post-doctoral Fellow) Laleh Sadeghian, “Star Clusters and Dark Matter as Probes of the Spacetime Geometry of Massive Black Holes”, May 16, 2013 (Professors Will / Ferrer) University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee – (Postdoctoral Research Associate) Zhenyu Zhou, “Various Geometric Aspect of Condensed Matter Physics”, May 31, 2013 (Professor Seidel) George Mason University (postdoctoral Researcher – join with University of Pittsburgh (visiting scholar) Julia Saskia Wildeboer, “Physics of Resonating Valence Bound Spin Liquids”, June 21, 2013 (Professor Seidel) National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, Florida State University (Postdoctoral Research Associate) Sina Mossahebi, a graduate student in the Department, is a part of the Cardiovascular Biophysics Research Group and described its research: Cardiologists diagnose and treat heart function disorders using approximate, correlation-based indexes obtained from various cardiac imaging modalities such as cardiac MRI or echocardiography (cardiac ultrasound). Because all hearts initiate their filling by being mechanical suction pumps, the filling function (diastole) of the heart is particularly well suited for analysis using methods familiar to physicists, such as Newton’s Law – expressed as an equation of motion. Our research group is primarily theoretical and uses differential equations (Newton’s Law) to model the filling of the heart. Doppler ultrasound recording of the velocity of blood entering the left ventricle during (mechanical suction Leandro Medina de Oliveira was selected to participate in the McDonnell International Scholars Academy in 2011. Students are selected on the basis of their promise to become future leaders in academia, government, the professions or the corporate world. The Academy provides academic, cultural and social opportunities to help scholars develop into future leaders knowledgeable about the United States, other countries of the world and critical international issues. During spring break in March, 2014, the McDonnell International Scholars Academy students traveled to New York and met leaders in finance, media and government. Lauren Christine Tran, “Biological Applications of Extraordinary Electroconductance and Photovoltaic Effects in Inverse Extraordinary Optoconductance”, June 25, 2013 (Professor Solin) Washington University School of Medicine – (Post Doctoral Research Associate in Radiation Oncology) Benjamin Burch, “Galactic Dark Matter”, August 27, 2013 (Professor Cowsik) Tsen-Hsuan Lin, “Assessing Functional Deficits at Optic Neuritis Onset in EAE Mice Using Manganese-Enhanced MRI (MEMRI) and Diffusion fMRI”, September 11, 2013 (Professors Conradi /Song) National Laboratory Academica Sinica – (Postdoc) Christopher D. Markle, “On the Orientational Dependence of the Casimir Force”, November 19, 2013 (Professor Cowsik) Xiaoxin Yin, “Molecular Simulations of Diffusion-Tensor MRI” February 7, 2014 (Professor Conturo/Wessel) Philips Healthcare (Software Development Engineer) initiated) early diastole is used as the target to which the model predicted velocity is fit by minimizing the difference between the two. Once achieved, the method quantitates diastolic function based on the parameters of the equation of motion. The parameters stemming from these physical principles applied to diastole correspond to actual, validated, chamber properties such as its stiffness, relaxation and response to load. This physics-based approach to the physiology of filling allows model-based, objective characterization of diastolic function and has already provided a tool for the discovery of ‘new’ cardiac physiology. An abstract of a recent publication for the group can be found at: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs13239-0140176-8#page-2 Narelle Hillier defended her Ph.D. thesis at the end of May 2013. In the course of her research she reached the highest pressure (2.1 Mbar) ever achieved in Schilling’s group and certainly the highest in Missouri (see photo). Since August 2013 she has taken up teaching duties as Assistant Professor at Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri. Summer 2014 Page 15 STUDENT NEWS Former graduate student, Wenli Bi, has been a postdoc in sector III of the Advanced Light Source (APS) in the Argonne National Labs since receiving her Ph.D. in Schilling’s group in May 2011. She has become expert in Moessbauer effect experiments on unconventional magnetic materials under extreme pressure conditions. In January 2014 a student in Schilling’s group from South Korea, Isaiah Lim, succeeded in carrying out a true four-point resistivity experiment on a tiny 30x30 square micron Dy sample to 1.6 Mbar pressure to temperatures as low as 1.3 K. This represents an amazing technical achievement (try it sometime!). Students Win International University Physics Competition A Washington University in St. Louis team of juniors in Arts & Sciences, Ryan Endsley, Nathan Stein, and Christina Kreisch, won a gold medal for their physics-based analysis of a problem during the international University Physics Competition, held in November, 2013. The competition is an international contest for undergraduate students, who work in teams of three at their home colleges and universities all over the world. The students were asked to analyze the following scenario using principles of physics and write a formal paper describing their conclusions. The problem: Assume a planet has been found whose mass is eight times that of Earth while its radius is twice that of Earth. The average surface temperature on the planet is 250 K (Kelvin). A four-legged animal has evolved to live on the equator of this planet. Produce a physics-based analysis on how life on this planet might be similar to, or different from, creatures that evolved on Earth. They spent a weekend in November, 48 hours, analyzing the real-world scenario using the principles of physics and writing a formal paper describing their work. The team members concluded that: A team of juniors in Arts & Sciences won the Gold Medal in the international University Physics Competition. The students were (from left): Ryan Endsley, a physics and mathematics double major, Nathan Stein, a physics and geophysics double major, and Christina Kreisch, a physics and mathematics double major. The team was sponsored by Fracesc Ferrer, PhD, assistant professor of physics. “... bone width would increase by approximately 30 percent, and bone length would decrease, yielding more compact animals with shorter extremities. Leg bones would meet the body at shallower angles, making legs straighter. Most organs, including the heart, would increase in size due to an approximate doubling of blood volume per unit mass, and capillary radius would increase. Due to increased surface gravity, animals would have to expend more energy to reach efficient modes of locomotion than they do on Earth, decreasing their speed.” At the Undergraduate Research Symposium held on October 26, 2013, the Physics Department was well represented. Marie Draper and Ryan Endsley delivered the keynote address, and posters were presented by George Ferguson, Ethan Kahn, Ted Wenneker, Simeng Zhou, Charles Schlaepfer, and Zachary Markow. A. Nony Maus Above is an artist’s conception of what such an animal might look like. The WUSTL team’s entry was chosen as the gold medal winner from a field of 69. Christina Kreisch, a Junior student, has been awarded a 2014 SPS Leadership Scholarship. For more information on the program, see: http://www.spsnational.org/programs/scholarships/leadership.htm. Department of Physics Newsletter Page 16 STUDENT NEWS New Graduate Students Graduating Seniors For the 2012-2013 academic year, the department admitted nineteen new graduate students: For the 2013-2014 academic year, the department admitted fourteen new graduate students: Rashied Amini Batoul Banihashemi Wenli Chen Joy Counts Levente Dojcsak Ruixiang Fei Brendan Haas Nara Higano Janie Hoormann Seyedhadi Hoseini Tahereh Mazaheri Kouhani Matthew Reisman Jamie Smith Elias Vikas Soni Dian Tan Seyyed Vaezi Yuhe Wang Nicholas Weingartner Boyi Zhou Robert Ashcraft Mackenzie Atkinson Banafsheh Beheshtipour Shiyuan Gao Nima Hassanpour Ghadi Zhengyu Ma Augusto Medeiros da Rosa Mahdi Naghiloo Jordan Russell Jonah Scher-Zagier Jing Song Nathan Walsh Bowen Zhou Hongyang Zou Physics Seniors, 2014 2013 Seniors Twenty four seniors graduated in May 2013: John Blears Walter Buhro Kathyrn Child Mitchell Eagles Aaron Foote Walter Fu Jeffrey Gerold David Goldfinger Aaron Hing Christopher Izzo Bartlomeij Kudrzycki Brian Lynch Derek Miller Thomas Morrell Thomas Muschinski Jordan Raisher Andres Schiefer Alisa Stavig Marion Sudvarg Ari Tenzer Philip Thomas Stephen Thormquist Adam Trebach Samuel Witte 2014 Seniors Twenty six seniors graduated in May 2014: Samuel Barth Madison Cannon Brian Clark Daniel Corin Ari Eisenstadt Alexander Ellis Kevin Garza Erin Gauger Roxanne Glazier Ethan Kahn Michelle Knopp Christopher Lauber Brian Lebow Benjamin Lewis Kefu Lu Zachary Markow Corie Miller Vineet Paruchuri Benjamin Pollack Samuel Rudy Mary Stork Sirish Veligati Yixiang Wang Harison Wiesman Kevin Zecchini Simeng Zhu Summer 2014 Page 17 STUDENT NEWS Society of Physics Students The Washington University Society of Physics Students chapter, advised by Prof. Francesc Ferrer, organized a visit to the Argonne National Laboratory, and a variety of on-campus events including making ice cream with liquid nitrogen (and eating it afterward!) and stargazing at Tyson Observatory (a distant satellite of campus). Several faculty members gave talks about their research at SPS meetings, and a number of SPS members presented talks about their research at venues including the PEW Midstates Consortium Undergraduate Research Symposium in the Physical Sciences, Mathematics and Computer Science, the NASA Missouri Space Grant Consortium, and the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. In 2013, the Washington University Chapter of the Society of Physics Students was recognized as a Distinguished SPS Chapter. Some of the criteria for this award include: • The chapter’s involvement in local, zone and national SPS meetings Participation in SPS programs • Outreach efforts to the grades K-12 or the general public • Participation in community service • Contributions to student recruitment and retention • Participation in social events • Interactions with the department’s alumni SPS Inductees, 2013 Sigma Pi Sigma Inductees Join us in congratulating the newest members of the Washington University in St. Louis Chapter of Sigma Pi Sigma, the national physics honor society. The members elected for 2013-2014 are: The members elected for 2014-2015 are: Walter Fu David Goldfinger Brian Lynch Derek Miller Wei Jia Ong Alissa Stavig Ari Tenzer Samuel Witte Daniel Corin Ethan Kahn Benjamin Pollak Zachary Markow Samuel Rudy Mary Stork Sirish Veligati Sean Wang Harison Wiesman SPS Inductees, 2014 Department of Physics Newsletter Page 18 STUDENT AWARDS Departmental Awards to Students Each year, the department awards prizes for outstanding performance. Graduate Students Shull Prize Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence Awarded to the top graduate teaching assistant in memory of Franklin Shull, the senior faculty instructor in introductory courses for many years, to recognizes the importance that the Department attaches to the quality of teaching assistantships. Each Spring the Dean of the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences recognizes outstanding teaching assistants with a $1,500 cash prize and certificate of encomium. TAs are recommended for the award by their department. Award recipients are publicized in the Commencement booklet in the year of their graduation. May 2013 - Jeffrey Pobst was recognized with the Shull Prize. Jeff did an exemplary job as an Intro Physics lab TA for 3 semesters, as well as an Electronics lab TA. He’s provided some helpful interactive demos to use with the Smartboards and has been a huge help troubleshooting the existing labs so that we can improve them. Jeffrey Pobst receiving the Shull prize from Dr. Alford May 2014 - Wenlei Chen was awarded the Shull Prize. Wenlei did an exceptional job as the TA for Physics 117 this past fall. He provided insightful explanations to students in his office hours, suggested problems for the exam, and seamlessly oversaw the homework and quiz grading Wenlei Chen receiving the for the course, which included Shull prize from Dr. Alford keeping two undergraduate graders on track and on time. In addition, he made valuable contributions to the course above and beyond what is expected of a typical TA by almost singlehandedly developing a state-of-the-art, in-class demonstration of a Cavendish balance. He researched the apparatus, set up the demonstration, and prepared a detailed write-up for the students and for Prof. Solin to use in class. May 2013 - Xiaoxian “Sherry” Yin received a Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence from the University. Sherry has served as a TA in Intro Physics labs for 7 semesters, as well as the instructor for Physics 117 during the Summer 2010 session. Sherry is extremely devoted to helping her students learn and is willing to go above and beyond expectations to ensure this happens. For example, she typically held office hours for 2.5-4 hours each day during the summer, even though she was only required to stay for one hour each day. Her student evaluations constantly say how much the students felt that Sherry was genuinely concerned for them. She has also been indispensable sharing advice on the labs to the new TAs each semester. May 2014 - Dimitrios Manolidis is a 7th year PhD student who plans to defend his thesis, entitled “Neutron star models in alternative theories of gravity,” in May. Dimitrios has excelled in TA roles in which he works with students new to physics. He served as an Introductory Physics Lab TA for 11 semesters, as well as a TA for several physics courses for non-science Dimitrios Manolidis majors. Dimitrios is exceptional at helping students practice critical thinking skills, such as learning to evaluate the real-world plausibility of their results. Students generally find this activity challenging and pointless, but Dimitrios has been incredibly successful in helping his students to recognize the importance of critically assessing scientific results, as well as becoming adept at this skill. Summer 2014 Page 19 STUDENT AWARDS Undergraduate Students Varney Prize Greg Delos Summer Research Fellowship Awarded to the best student in the introductory courses. Professor Robert Varney was a member of the faculty for many years. This prize was established to commemorate his deep and longtime interest in physics instruction. 2012-2013 - Anthony V. Grebe To support a summer’s research opportunity for the selected student to work with a mutually acceptable research group. May 2013 - Tim Ellis-Calleo, Teddy Wenneker May 2014 - George Ferguson, Yu Tao Li Mark Alford & Anthony Grebe Undergraduate Summer Research Award Awarded to undergraduate students who proposed outstanding summer research projects. Senior Prize Awarded to the outstanding senior physics majors. May 2013 - Walter Fu, David Charles Goldfinger, Wei Jia Ong May 2014 - Zachary Markow, Harison Weisman 2013 - George (Matt) Ferguson, Harison Wiesman, Ryan Endsley, Yu Tao (Roger) Li, Ken Tharp, Marie Draper, Erin Gauger, Tansel (Baran) Yasar, Zachary Markow, Clarence Chu 2014 - Satcher Hsieh, Roy Bliley, Marie Draper, Justin Finkel, Michael Lilien, Samuel Hull, Pengning Chao, Christopher Munley Zachary Markow & Mark Alford Harison Weisman & Mark Alford Pengning Chao & Mark Alford Honor Thesis Recognition Honors students who completed a thesis. May 2013 - John Blears, Walter Buhro, Walter Fu, David Goldfinger, Adam Trebach, Wei Jai Ong, Samuel Witte May 2014 - Zachary Markow, Harison Weisman (Electrostatic Levitation Facility continued from 4) “...the most intense pulsed neutron source on Earth…” neutron flux available at the SNS allows data to be obtained in much shorter times than possible with reactor-based neutron sources, enabling the measurements in supercooled liquids to be extended to much lower temperatures. Hosted by the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Kelton spent a sabbatical at the SNS from July 2012 through June 2013 as a visiting scientist in the Joint Institute for Neutron Sciences (JINS). He worked with his research group and with scientists at the SNS to complete and test his Neutron ElectroStatic Levitation (NESL) facility. In February NESL was successfully tested on the VULCAN beam-line (figure 1). It is scheduled for a final test on the higher-intensity NOMAD beam-line in late summer 2014. Department of Physics Newsletter Page 20 STAFF NEWS Richard Bose, Electronic/Computer System Engineer in the experimental astrophysics group, received the keys to the City of St. Louis from Mayor Slay in commemoration of the circum-Antarctic balloon flight of the TIGER (Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder) cosmic ray experiment (and the visit of a St. Louis City flag to Antarctica). At the May 2013 Staff Day Service Award Scott Handley (Advanced Lab Coordinator) received a 2013 Outstanding Staff Award in a Ceremony, the following staff members were honored: ceremony on August 14, 2013. Drew Osterhout has joined the staff as a Faculty Assistant. He works on the introductory physics labs, as a TA in the lab and behind the scenes to make sure labs go as smoothly as possible. He says that he is essentially a professional TA! Rich Schmaeng - 40 years Sarah Hedley - 15 years Christine Monteith - 15 years At the May 2014 Staff Day Service Award Ceremony, the following staff members were honored: Todd Hardt - 30 years Marty Olevitch - 30 years Stan Crone - 26 years Alison Verbeck - 15 years Debbie Barco - 10 years Richard Bose presenting Mayor Slay with the St. Louis flag flown in Antarctica WUSTL team wins People’s Choice Award at 2014 Rube Goldberg Harison Wiesman, a senior physics major, competed with a Washington University in St. Louis team at the 2014 Rube Goldberg Machine Contest. The Green Machine designed by WUSTL undergraduates won the People’s Choice, second place and Best Single Step awards. The national competition was held at the Center of Science and Industry in Columbus, Ohio, in April 2014. This year’s challenge was to zip a zipper. Each team received a complimentary kit of three by YKK, the international zipper manufacturer. WUSTL’s Green Machine featured solar panels, a bike, windmills, laundry drying on a clothesline, two gardens – one of which (window-box flowers) won the Best Single Step Award – and lots of backyard wildlife. The machines are judged on story telling, complexity (they must have at least 20 steps), machine flow (can you follow what’s happening), humor, and the use of everyday items for tasks for which they were not intended. The Green Machine was designed and built by: (top row, from left) freshman Anish Kanesa-Thasan, junior Amy Patterson, Grace Kuo, a junior majoring in electrical engineering, and (bottom row, from left) Harison Wiesman, a senior physics major and Michelle Heredia, a freshman chemical engineering major. Lydia Zoells (not pictured), a sophmore majoring in English, could not attend the competition. Teams lose points if a team member has to intervene to nudge something that is stuck or if a moveable part “leaves the machine.” You can watch a video of the machine in action at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nug-347xuac. Summer 2014 Page 21 IN MEMORIAM James Burgess (1929-2014) by Michael Friedlander, Professor Emeritus It is with great sadness that we take note of the passing of our longtime colleague, Jim Burgess (GR 55), in Bellingham, WA, on April 7, 2014, after a short illness. Noted as an excellent teacher, for several years Jim was the mainstay of Phys. 217218, the most important courses for attracting and retaining physics majors. Jim had the appreciation and respect of the department. John Clark, Norberg’s successor as chairman, recalls Jim as “a most admirable colleague, and we all enjoyed his company.” As an undergraduate, Mark Conradi had Jim as his advisor. “I remember going to him many times to ask about things I did not understand. He was so patient with me... It did not hurt at all that Jim was an electron spin resonance practitioner and I was doing NMR with Jim was born in Portland, Oregon, May 11, Norberg. I don’t think he ever booted me out 1929. His college education began in the State and said “later!” College of Washington where he obtained his John Fowler (1926-2014) first degrees, BS in 1949 and MS in 1951. by Michael Friedlander, Professor Emeritus His long association with WU started when with John Layman, University of Maryland he came here as a graduate student and received his Ph.D. in 1955. George Pake was Our friend and an advisor, and Jim’s dissertation supervisors were Dick Norberg and Jack Townsend. After former colleague, graduating, he spent a year as Senior Engineer John Major Fowler, at Sylvania Electric Products, then a few years passed away in Silver Spring, at Stanford. Jim was back at WU in 1962 MD, on April 8, and remained here until his retirement in 2014. He was December 2002. born on February 4, 1926 in Magnetic resonance research has long Eufaula, Alabama. been one of the strong research areas in our department; Jim’s research used electron spin Coming from a Quaker family, it resonance. He worked with Jack Townsend, Barry Commoner and colleagues in the Center was natural that John and all of his brothers should attend Earlham College, where he for the Biology of Natural Systems (in the obtained his first degree in 1949. He obtained Department of Botany, before it merged with his graduate degrees from the University Zoology to create the current Department of Oklahoma (M.S., 1950) and from Johns of Biology). Another collaborator was Sam Hopkins University (Ph.D., 1954). He came to Weissman, in the Department of Chemistry. Washington University as a research associate Jim was one of those faculty whose (1954-56), carrying out research at the unobtrusive presence is felt in many ways. university’s cyclotron. John was appointed to He joined with Frank Shull in taking over a the physics faculty in 1956 and was awarded number of important tasks from successive tenure in 1961. He remained here until 1965, chairmen - arranging the teaching schedule when his changing interests took him east, to a after considering the preferences and series of positions where the central focus was strengths of individual faculty and selecting the teaching of physics. winners of the department’s annual awards. Before this, however, there came the issue of The efficient performance of these tasks is essential, especially in a large department with the testing of nuclear explosives, producing debris that included the radioactive isotopes a complex mix of duties and needs. Sr-90 and I-131. Carried from the Nevada test site by the prevailing winds and brought down with rain in regions with many dairy cows, fallout entered the food chain primarily through the milk. The concentration of Sr-90 in the St. Louis milk was among the highest in the U.S. and attracted widespread concern. In 1956, John and his Quaker friend Walter Bauer, of the W.U. Department of Pathology, began giving lectures aimed at the general public, describing fallout, radioactivity, halflives, radiation, and what was known (or not yet reliably known) of the biological effects of ionizing radiation. They spoke to Rotary Clubs, to Kiwanis, to PTAs, to church groups, and (as John described their efforts) ‘to anyone who would listen.’ In trying to explain complex technical issues to non-scientists, John and Walter were showing their concern that scientists recognize their professional obligation to reach out beyond academic circles. Concern about possible health effects of fallout continued, and in 1958 a group of concerned scientists formed the Greater St. Louis Citizens’ Committee for Nuclear Information (CNI). John along with E.U. Condon (chairman of the WU Department of Physics) and Barry Commoner (WU Professor of Botany), played a leading role in the formation of CNI, whose mission was to draw attention to the possible health hazards of radioactive fallout. A major project of CNI was the Baby Tooth Survey (BTS). CNI’s volunteers collected baby teeth that were analyzed by scientists in the Washington University School of Dental Medicine and showed the steady increase of Sr-90 in baby teeth. Public concern over fallout, based largely on efforts of CNI and similar groups, led to the adoption by the U.S. of the Limited Test Ban Treaty in 1963. John was a frequent lecturer on the radiation hazards of nuclear weapons testing. In 1962, as president of CNI, John testified on radioactive fallout before the Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy. He was the editor of one of the earliest books on fallout: Fallout: A Study of Superbombs, Strontium 90 and Surviva. (Basic Books, 1960). (Continued on page 22) Department of Physics Newsletter Page 22 IN MEMORIAM (In Memoriam continued from page 21) While John was deeply involved in CNI, he was also engaged in a major curriculum change in our department. This occurred during the immediate postSputnik years when curriculum revision was attracting federal funding as well as considerable interest, and when inexpensive and better-designed demonstration and lab apparatus were being made available. In 1985, he founded the Triangle Coalition for Science and Technology Education and served as its Director until 1994. The mission of the Triangle Coalition for STEM Education has been ‘to bring together government, business, and education to enhance our members’ efforts to foster a STEM literate workforce and citizenry.’ From 1983 until 1993, John was the Director of the program for Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching. Beginning in 1990, the Triangle Coalition administrated the Albert Einstein Distinguished Education Fellowship Program; STEM teachers could spend a year in Washington DC, with a Federal agency or Congressional office. Jack was born on September 8, 1949 in Honolulu, Hawaii. He graduated from the University of Puget Sound in 1971 with a BS in physics and came to WU for his graduate studies. Here he worked with Professors Joseph Klarmann and Martin Israel, and with fellow graduate student Patrick Love developing and flying a large-area balloonborne instrument. This experiment was designed to measure abundances and energy spectra of cosmic ray nuclei with charges between 13 and 30, and kinetic energies above 600 MeV/amu). The instrument, which flew successfully from Sioux Falls, SD in the fall of 1975 and again in the spring of 1976, provided the data for his thesis. John and Ed Lambe (also in our faculty) were teaching an introductory course taken by most engineers and pre-med students. They were very critical of the available textbooks that gave little or no attention to modern topics, such as special relativity or nuclear physics. They designed a new course (Physics 117 – 118) and produced the first volume of a new ‘modern’ text-book, which they named ‘The Particle Universe.’ The freshman labs were overhauled. New lecture-demonstration hardware was designed and built by John Brooks, the lecture-demonstrator. Gene Dorriere was the technician responsible for all of the electrical demo and lab equipment. After more than 50 years, many of these are still in use. John’s contributions to physics education were recognized early. In 1969, he was the recipient of the Millikan Award from the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) which recognizes those who have made notable and intellectually creative contributions to the teaching of physics. Marty Israel remembers Jack as an excellent hard-working graduate student, with whom it was a pleasure to work. As Marty noted, ‘Jack was one of those students from whom the research advisor learns as much as the student learns from the advisor.’ All of this was a massive undertaking, but it set John on his long-term career of curriculum reform and, more broadly, on the teaching of physics. To pursue this interest, John left Washington University in 1965. During 196567, he was the Executive Secretary of the Commission of College Physics (1965-67). With strong support from the Commissioners, John’s quiet leadership exerted a major influence on the AAPT programs to improving techniques and materials. Jack Tueller (GR 79) by Michael Friedlander, Professor Emeritus After leaving CCP, John was a Visiting Professor at the University of Maryland (196774), and then Director of Special Projects and Publications of the National Science Teachers Association (1974-1984). A man of great dignity and with a quiet demeanor, John would surely have been pleased to be remembered for not following the usual straight-line path for physicists from college to post-doctoral research and faculty career. His lasting contributions are the creation of CNI, leading to the Test Ban Treaty of 1963 and the Triangle Coalition with its focus on science education. Jack, a pioneer in observational gamma-ray astronomy at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center for over 30 years, died February 20, 2013 in Washington, DC, of pancreatic cancer. He remained active in his research until his final days. A NASA Postdoctoral Fellowship brought Jack to Goddard in 1980. After three years, he was appointed a civil servant scientist. At Goddard, he pursued gamma-ray astronomy and became a world-renowned experimental astrophysicist. Jack worked on balloon spectrometers, and was the Principal Investigator for the Gamma Ray Imaging Spectrometer (GRIS) in 1993. GRIS was a highly successful payload with 8 balloon flights that led to scientific discoveries of gamma-ray line emission from the supernova remnant SN 1987A and the distribution of positron annihilation line emission from the galactic center region. For these accomplishments, he shared in the John Lindsay Memorial Award in 1991. This annual NASA Award goes to the ‘Goddard scientists who exemplify the same level of scientific distinction as Dr. Lindsay.’ as Jack proposed a new balloon instrument - a focusing hard X-ray telescope (InFOCUS) - for high sensitivity observations in the 20 - 80 keV band. This instrument has flown successfully three times. At this time, it is being modified to fly with a polarimeter developed by our faculty colleague, Henric Krawczynski and his group at WU. Jack’s telescope with the (Continued on page 23) Summer 2014 Page 23 ALUMNI NEWS In January, the Department received a donation of $150, from Colonel Ken Davey (Retd.) (LA 45) who appears in the Department’s 1939-40 photo. We do not usually report on the donations that we receive, but this one had such an interesting history that we thought it merited a note. We called Col. Davey who readily gave his permission to include this anecdote. The history of this donation goes back to 1938, ‘when I was an undergraduate student working for the Physics department. I worked there three years prior to going to war as a B-17 bomber pilot.’ ‘As laboratory assistant, my job was to maintain the marble table and to set up demonstrations. One day I mentioned to Dr. Hagenow that I needed to take off half a day so that I could go to the dentist since I was in great pain. He told me that the University had a policy offering free dental services to those who volunteered to be treated by the Dental School students. (MF: WU had a School of Dental Medicine until 1991.) This would also benefit the training of future dentists and the work would be closely supervised by instructors.’ ‘I arrived promptly at the Dental School and met my eager apprentice dentist; he happened to be the football team’s fullback. He said to me “Ken Davey, you are going to receive the best treatment you ever had! I am going to fill your tooth full of gold!” He was right about the treatment and the gold. The filling remained intact in my mouth through the war, subsequent Air Force tours, and teaching at the University of South Florida, where I finally retired.’ ‘After I had moved to Tampa Bay, the tooth once so expertly repaired was decayed and the filling was removed by a local dentist. He said, ”Ken – keep this big gold nugget. You might sell it one day.” ‘Many years later, in 2013, while driving in town, I saw a “We buy Gold” sign, and subsequently sold the gold filing for $150. Now you know the rest of the story, and why this money is yours. It is sent to you with great appreciation and gratitude for the kind and outstanding dental work I received.’ Col. Davey will celebrate his 100th birthday in September 2014. Physics Department 1939-40 (Davey is in the second row, second from the left) Bascom Deaver (GR 54), now Professor of Physics Emeritus & Research Professor at the University of Virginia, reminisced abut his time at WU. He graduated from Georgia Tech in 1952, and was immediately ordered to active duty as a 2nd Lt. in the Air Force, (Continued on page 24) (In Mermoriam continued from page 22) WU focal plane detector will be flown from Fort Sumner (NM) this September, and on a long duration balloon flight from McMurdo, Antarctica, in 2017. For most of the past decade he chaired the Balloon Working Group, which was established for the purpose of providing user input into management of balloon flight operations. Jack’s work on this project leaves a vibrant legacy, with several high-altitude balloon flights envisioned for the next decade. Tueller was a highly active researcher with a strong drive for perfection. His flight success record for GRIS and InFOCUS is one of the best in the business. He was generous with his time and helped many colleagues with their research. Jack was an ebullient and Since 1998, Jack has been Project Scientist for the NASA Scientific Balloon program, working with the NASA Program Scientist. happy person who was the life of whatever activity in which he was involved. He will be greatly missed by his colleagues and friends. (Obituary adapted from the In Memoriam notice composed by Jack’s NASA colleagues: Neil Gehrels, Scott Barthelmy (GR 85 ), Vernon Jones and Henric Krawczynski. Our thanks to them for permission to use this material including photo by Scott Barthelmy.) Department of Physics Newsletter Page 24 ALUMNI NEWS (Alumni News continued from page 23) admitted to the Civilian Institutions Division (CID) Air Force Program and assigned to Washington University to earn a Masters Degree in Physics. ‘Prior to learning that I would be ordered to active duty, I had already been accepted into the Ph. D. program at Washington U. with a nice fellowship. When I found out about being ordered to active duty, I immediately applied to the CID program, and upon acceptance, I contacted C. Sharp Cook in the Physics Department saying I would be going wherever the Air Force sent me. ‘I had a wonderful experience there. Compton was still Chancellor, George Pake was chairman of the Physics Department, C. Sharp Cook was my Masters project advisor (although he left for California before I graduated, and Alec Pond became my advisor), and I had great courses from A.L. Hughes, Pake, Nehari in the Math Department, and my favorite teacher of all time, Henry Primakoff. ‘I did take and pass the Ph. D. qualifying exam in the hope of returning to WU. In January 1954 we moved to Albuquerque for my assignment to Kirtland Air Force Base.’ After serving in the Air Force (1954 – 57), Bascom resumed his studies and completed his Ph.D. at Stanford. Apart from holding a Sloan Fellowship at M.I.T. (1966-68), Bascom was at the University of Virginia until he retired. We noted an interesting article by Byron Roe (LA 54) in the APS News of January 2014. In this essay, We Need Undirected Research, Byron argues very cogently that basic, ‘undirected’ research was essential to progress in science, for this research often led to major applications that had not been foreseen. (see www.aps.org/publications/ apsnews/201401/backpage.cfm). Byron writes that he is still active in his research, and is ‘currently working on an experiment at Fermilab looking for low-mass dark matter particles and working on an article pointing out a problem with the way particle physicists do chi-square fitting in the presence of backgrounds.’ Byron obtained his Ph.D. from Cornell in 1959, and has been at the University of Michigan for many years. He is now an Emeritus Professor, but still active. David Keys (EN 73, GR 84) has told us that he has retired after an active 39 years in medical physics. He was board certified in Therapeutic Radiological Physics and also in Diagnostic Radiological Physics. David established one of the earliest groups to provide physics services in diagnostic radiology, nuclear medicine, radiation therapy, and radiation safety. His primary interest has been radiation oncology physics, and he was the first to establish Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy in a nonuniversity setting in the St Louis area. In addition to his clinical work, he was able to bring five software products to the commercial market to aid the practice of medical physics. In recognition of his work, David was named a fellow by the American College of Radiology, the American Association of Physicists in Medicine, and the American College of Medical Physics. David was proud to tell us that he also ‘managed to coach over 800 games for his children in various sports.’ Our congratulations go to Gabe Spalding (LA 83) as the recipient of the Jonathan F. Reichert and Barbara Wolff-Reichert Award from the American Physical Society. The award citation reads: “For introducing contemporary concepts and significant enhancement to “beyond first-year” physics laboratory courses, and for playing a key role in organizing the nation-wide Advanced Laboratory Physics Association and being its first president.” After receiving his A.B. in Physics and Mathematics, Gabe was a graduate student at Harvard University where he received his PhD in 1990. Gabe is Jonathan Reichert, now a Professor of Barbara Wolff-Reichert Physics at Illinois and Gabe Spalding Wesleyan University in Bloomington, Illinois where he has maintained his research interest in optical trapping and optical micromanipulation, and has also been a leading player in the efforts to improve undergraduate labs. This has been an exceptionally good year for Gabe. AAPT has awarded him the association’s Homer L. Dodge Citation for Distinguished Service to AAPT, in recognition of his exceptional contributions to the association. In addition, Gabe has been selected a Fellow of AAPT, a Fellow of SPIE, and a Fellow of APS. And, most recently, he has been appointed the inaugural Ames Professor of Physics. Beyond these honors, Gabe has been Chair of the AAPT Committee on Laboratories and Founding President of ALPhA, the “Advanced Laboratory Physics Association,” which serves as a focus group for instructors interested in lab instruction beyond the first year of university (see www.advlab.org). Undergraduate labs have been at the center of much of Gabe’s energies. He has coled two national conferences on laboratory instruction beyond the first year of university and, with ALPhA, established an ongoing series of focused training opportunities for lab instructors that offer training on a wide array of contemporary instructional advanced labs. At Illinois Wesleyan, this involvement has enabled rapid curriculum changes. In his research activity, Gabe is a frequent visitor (Continued on page 25) Summer 2014 Page 25 ALUMNI NEWS (Alumni News continued from page 24) at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland in the Optical Trapping Group where he collaborates with Kishan Dholakia, Professor of Physics. Older alums will recognize the name Jonathan Reichert (GR 62) in the report of Gabe’s award. Jonathan is also one of our alumni and was featured in the cover story of our Newsletter in Fall 2011. In brief, Jonathan was a member of the faculty of the State University of New York in Buffalo until 1998 when he retired in order to concentrate his energies on a company that he had founded, Teachspin Inc., designed ‘to build rugged, reliable hands-on laboratory apparatus for advanced experimental physics instruction.’ In 2007, the Advanced Laboratory Physics Association (ALPhA) was started – and Gabe has been a major player in ALPhA’s activities. In an email, Jonathan notes that ‘We have gotten to know Gabe very well since he is a major part of the effort to get ALPhA off the ground. It was a great thrill for Barbara and me to present him with the award.’ An interesting email from Martin Poitzsch (LA 83) has brought us up-to-date from 2004, when we last coveed his career in our columns. We always like to know that our alumni ‘always read the excellent WU Physics Newsletter with great interest.’ Martin tells us that ‘I have been very actively involved in communicating to – and recruiting – young physics grads into industrial and applied (nonacademic) careers.’ From 2004 to 2013, Martin directed the Sensor Physics Department in Schlumberger’s corporate research center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The focus of their research has been on evaluating reservoir rocks and fluids and enhancing the productivity of reservoirs, as well as facilitating various well construction and intervention operations. Main areas of investigation included low-energy nuclear physics (neutrons and gammas), gravity, NMR, acoustics, analytical chemistry and spectroscopy of reservoir fluids, and microdevices for rheological and spectroscopic measurements. Non-research activities include university relations, corporate recruiting, and Early Phase M & A surveillance and investments in start-ups. In September 2013, Martin moved to the Production side (and back to Houston), coordinating the introduction of new physical sensors in permanently-installed “Intelligent Well Completions” to enable the fully-instrumented, zone-by-zone-controlled complex segmented oil wells of the future and thereby extend reservoir recovery factors as well as the lifetime and safety of infrastructure. He is currently involved with the largest such project in the world, being installed in southeastern Saudi Arabia. Since 2009, Martin has also been involved with the APS (serving on the Forum on Industrial & Applied Physics executive committee) and more recently, as his Company’s delegate to the Corporate Associates Advisory Committee to the AIP. In these roles, he has helped to organize numerous conference sessions on “industrial physics” in the past few APS March Meetings and also AVS and AGU meetings. At the moment, he is working on his third Industrial Physics Forum for an international conference, to be held in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in late September 2014. This conference is being organized jointly by AIP and ICTP Brazil, the Americas branch of ICTP Trieste. We had an email from Marc Caffee (GR 86) who tells us that he is still the director of the PRIME Lab (Purdue Rare Isotope Measurement Laboratory) dedicated as a research and service facility for accelerator mass spectrometry and enjoying extended NSF support. PRIME Lab is a dedicated research and service facility for accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS). ‘At Purdue we have constructed a major national AMS facility centered on the Physics Department’s tandem electrostatic accelerator. We are using the accelerator to measure both man-made and cosmic-ray-produced radionuclides such as 10Be, 14C, and 36Cl in natural samples having isotopic abundances down to one part in 1x1015.’ Last year Marc was inducted as a Fellow into the Geological Society of America. In addition, he is the Associate Department Head in Physics at Purdue University. His field work has mostly focused on reconstructing glacial sequences in the Himalayas, Tibet, and Western China. On a personnel note, Marc tells us that his children are following scientific paths. The oldest is at the University at Buffalo where he is majoring in geology, and the youngest, still in high school, is spending much of his time in his honors physics class. Rob Phillips (GR 89) tells us that he is still enjoying being at Caltech. He has been there for fourteen years and is the Fred and Nancy Morris Professor of Biophysics and Biology. Indeed, as a member of both the departments of Applied Physics and Biology and Biological Engineering, he is working at the interface between physics and biology, trying to use the tools of physics to understand in a quantitative fashion how cells work. Over recent years, he has been hard at work on several books including “Physical Biology of the Cell” which last year won the Society of Biology award as best book of the year. ‘Probably the recent highlight of my time at Caltech has been leading students on field trips to experience biology (and geology) first hand. Several weeks ago I took 14 students (Continued on page 26) Department of Physics Newsletter Page 26 ALUMNI NEWS (Alumni News continued from page 25) to the Galapagos Islands for an evolution adventure.’ (For the transcript of an interesting interview, see www.rpgroup.caltech.edu/ people/phillips.html) When we last had news of Michael Meyer (LA 89 ), he was about to move to the ETH Institute for Astronomy in Zurich. He has now been there for five years and is Chair of the Star and Planet Formation Group. Michael obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts in 1996. During 1997-2009, he was at the Steward Observatory and on the faculty of the University of Arizona. During 1996-97, Michael was a member of the Scientific Staff of the Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie in Heidelberg. Among his professional activities in the International Astronomical Union (IAU), Michael is a member of the Steering Committee of Division H – Interstellar Matter and Local Universe. Paging through Science, we came across a paper reporting observations of the galaxy M83, one of our nearest galaxies. The lead author was Chris Stockdale (EN 92), now an associate professor at Marquette University in Milwaukee. Chris received his Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma in 2001. During 2001-2003, Chris was an NRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC, studying the radio emission from supernovae and exploring their relationship with their host galaxies. Since 2003, he has been a member of the faculty of Marquette University. Chris has continued his research with radio observations and with several collaborators at other universities. Chris was awarded tenure in 2010 and is currently an associate professor and also serving a term as the assistant department chair. We had noted that WU has several connections with Marquette University, as was confirmed by Melissa Vigil (LA 89) who had graduated with a double major, in physics and English literature. (Editorial note: many of our physics majors have had double majors.) As an undergraduate, Melissa worked with Mark Conradi to study solid hydrogendeuteride using NMR techniques. As a graduate student at DePaul University, Melissa studied both physics and science education. After graduating with her MS in 1991, she taught at Lincoln Land Community College and Elmhurst College, before joining the Marquette University physics faculty in 1992. She is now the Laboratory Supervisor. Her responsibilities are wide-ranging. She has worked to update both the equipment and the pedagogy of the introductory physics laboratories – ‘a never-ending process!’ as she notes. In addition to her 2/2 teaching load, she manages the labs for 5 courses with 41 undergraduate TAs. Melissa has worked with pre-service and in-service teachers, and with junior high and high school students through the Upward Bound program. That is not all – as she tells us ‘in the summers, I am actively involved with the Educational Opportunity Program.’ And the WU presence extends beyond Melissa and Chris. Patrick Johnston (GR 85) is one of their visiting professors. Randy Wolfmeyer (GR 13) was there before Patrick and is now one of Melissa’s collaborators on several projects. Still more: Don Matthys (GR 75) is Professor Emeritus, after teaching at Marquette for almost 40 years. His research has been on optical methods of full field measurement, to measure material properties of stress and strain in structural elements. He has also worked on panoramic lensing systems to specify the three dimension coordinates of objects in space, and to study the deformation of the inner surfaces of pipes and cylinders. After Jia Lu (LA 92) was awarded her Ph.D. at Harvard in 1997, she held a post-doc position at the University of California Berkeley. She returned to WU when a position opened in the EE department. Jia worked on ferromagnetic single electron Jia Lu and Richard Norberg , 1996 transistors. She also studied the electrical property of boron nanowires in collaboration with Bill Buhro at the WU Chemistry Department. While here, Jia received an NSF career award but moved to UC Irvine in 2002 because of the lack of nanofabrication facilities. Jia’s group began to synthesize semiconductor nanowires (mainly wide band gap, such as ZnO), and measured the electrical transport and chemical sensing properties as they are configured into fieldeffect transistors. In 2004, Jia received a very prestigious award: the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), conferred annually by the White House, following recommendations from participating agencies. Two years later, she moved to USC. The group’s research broadened to other semiconducting materials (e.g. In based and Cd based), as well as magnetic nanostructures. Strong collaborations have been formed with the Juelich Institute and Jena University in Germany, to expand studies to low temperature electrical and optical properties. Jia is especially pleased to note that she has ‘also recruited undergraduate students to participate in our research activities, since I personally benefited when I was an undergraduate student working in Prof. Norberg’s group.’ (Continued on page 27) Summer 2014 Page 27 ALUMNI NEWS (Alumni News continued from page 26) Bob Brazzle (GR 97) is now completing his first year in a tenure-track faculty position at Jefferson College (located about 30 miles SW of St. Louis). He is teaching Physical Science as well as all the physics and engineering courses (Statics, Dynamics and Circuit Analysis), and will begin teaching the College’s Introduction to Engineering Design course this coming fall. Next school year, he will begin serving on the curriculum committee. Before Jefferson, Bob’s career has been in high school science education. He has taught high school science and math, and has been a curriculum and professional development project specialist for the North Central Regional Education Laboratory. He has also worked on developing integrated math and science curriculum for a middle school enrichment program. We met Bob in Crow Hall, where he was attending a meeting of the St. Louis chapter of SLAPT (St. Louis Area Physics Teachers) which is affiliated with the American Association of Physics Teachers. SLAPT is very active, thanks to the energies of Bob and other members. This year, Bob has been serving as president of SLAPT. For over 25 years, Pat Gibbons has served as a link to our department; recently, Kasey Wagoner has also worked with these enthusiastic teachers. expected to write answers to some questions. They also ran a physics contest for highschool students here on campus on a recent Saturday, with tests, scoring, ranking, and prizes for the winners. Almost all SLAPT members are highschool physics teachers. They meet monthly on Saturday mornings to share teaching practices, lab experiments, and demonstrations. They staffed a Physics Day at Six Flags on a Friday, putting vests carrying recording accelerometers on students as they boarded Mr. Freeze, one of the roller coasters. After the ride the data were printed for each student and the students were Last fall, Aaron Mertz (LA 06) graduated from Yale, and moved to Rockefeller University in New York, to a post-doctoral associateship in the Laboratory of Mammalian Cell Biology and Development. Aaron tells us that ‘my new lab is very stimulating but a challenging environment in which I know I will learn a lot. Rockefeller is an amazing place for lifesciences research.’ And finally, Bob was justifiably proud of his recent paper, A Random Walk to Stochastic Diffusion through Spreadsheet Analysis, published in the American Journal of Physics in the November 2013 issue. (SIMS Laboratory Dedicated continued from page 7) Two of the planned instruments, a 3-D atom probe and an aberration-corrected transmission electron microscope, will allow users to explore and image materials at the level of individual atoms. The ability to see how materials are put together at many different scales – down to the atoms – will allow scientists to control their properties at the human scale, giving them the toughness, stickiness or other properties needed for demanding applications. New materials will be crucial to medicine, from biocompatible materials for prostheses or artificial organs to materials for protective gear that can prevent traumatic brain injury. Materials also will be key to developing sources of clean energy, from better catalysts for the production of biofuels to novel high-efficiency solar photovoltaics and portable energy storage devices. The weekly Friday barbecue held by the Physics grad students It’s not difficult to think of important problems whose solution will turn on the development of new materials; the difficulty is rather thinking of ones that will not. Department of Physics Campus Box 1105 One Brookings Drive St. Louis, MO 63130-4899 NONPROFIT ORG. U.S. POSTAGE PAID ST. LOUIS, MO PERMIT NO. 2535 DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICS NEWSLETTER / SUMMER 2014 Newsletter Editors Jonathan Katz katz@wuphys.wustl.edu Alison Verbeck alison@wustl.edu During the year, refer to our website (www.physics.wustl.edu) for up-to-date news. Members of the Department, Spring 2014