A member of Carleton's Physics and Astronomy Department since 1966, I hold
the title of Laurence McKinley Gould Professor in the Natural Sciences.
Life and education before Carleton:
I grew up mainly in Detroit, but finished high school just outside of
Louisville.
My undergraduate degree was from Amherst College in 1958, with a major in
physics.
>From there, I went to the University of California, Berkeley, where in 1963
I earned a Ph.D. in experimental solid state physics. (My thesis involved
nuclear magnetic resonance in superconductors.) For the next year and a
half I was a post-doc at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment, in
Harwell, England, where I did pulsed NMR measurements in superconducting
alloys. Returning to the U.S. in 1964, I took up a temporary teaching
position at Amherst before moving to Carleton in 1966.
Research:
At Carleton, I took up the then-new technique of electron tunneling in
superconductors. In 1972-73 I spent a sabbatical at the
Université de Paris-Sud,
Orsay, where (among other things) I worked with superconductors at ultrahigh
pressures. For several summers I joined a group at
Ames Lab,
Iowa State University, to study phonon spectra in superconductors. During a
1981-82 sabbatical at the
Université de
Genève,
in Switzerland, I made Hall effect measurements in superconductors and
joined with people from nearby
CERN
to investigate an anomalous field emission problem that was limiting the
performance of the superconducting microwave cavities intended for the LEP
(Large Electron-Positron) accelerator then under construction. In 1985-86 I
returned to the Université de Genève on a special leave to
work with the ultrahigh-vacuum scanning field emission facility that had
developed from the efforts of my previous sabbatical. Joining the
radio-frequency superconductivity group at Newman Lab, Cornell
University, I spent several summers continuing work on field emission and
contributing to their efforts to apply superconductivity to
particle-accelerator technology. My next sabbatical, in 1992-93, was spent
at the
Centre d'Etudes de Saclay
(outside Paris) of the French Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique,
again studying field emission. During the 2000-2001 academic year I am on
leave at the
High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK), working at the
KEK-B ("B-factory") accelerator.
I have co-authored over 25 scientific papers in refereed journals, including
Physical Review, Physics Letters,
Journal of Applied Physics, Proceedings of the Physical Society
(London),
Applied Physics, Journal of Physics, Solid State
Communications, Journal of Low Temperature Physics, Journal de
Physique, Physica,
Reviews of Modern Physics, and Particle Accelerators. I have
received four major research grants from the National Science Foundation.
Teaching:
Over my 33 years at Carleton, I have taught almost all of the courses in the
curriculum, with particular emphasis on the calculus-based introductory
course, several laboratory-oriented courses, and courses for non-science
majors. I co-authored a text, Revolutions in Physics, with my
colleague Mike Casper, for our Physics 120 course; I also developed (with my
colleague David Sipfle in Philosophy) a course in Carleton's Integrated
General Studies program, "The Rise of Modern Science", and co-edited its
locally-published packet of readings. Over the years I have received three
NSF laboratory equipment grants, the latest in 1994-96 to equip our
ultrahigh vacuum system as a surface physics facility.