Several former graduate students spent a few days together at Wash U, touring the Physics Department on October 7, 2019.
Among the attendees:
- Dave Bertsch did his PhD in the Cosmic Rays Group. His wife Dianne also worked in this group. He worked at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center as an Astrophysicist and played a key role in the Gamma Ray Observatory, an important NASA astrophysics satellite in the 1990s.
- Bob Guernsey, who completed his PhD in the Norberg/Luszczynski Group. He worked with low temperature physics, superfluid He4, and Second Sound. After graduation, he did research on superfluid He3 at Columbia University as an Assistant Professor and later worked as an IBM Distinguished Engineer studying applications of advanced hardware technologies to high end computer systems. He became President of the IBM Academy of Technology.
- Bob Leisure worked on ultrasonic studies of materials for his PhD and did research in solid state physics at low temperatures and very high magnetic fields. He was Chair of the Physics Department at Colorado State University for 6 years, a Fellow of Acoustical Society of America and Institute of Physics. He recently published a book titled Ultrasonic Spectroscopy: Applications in Condensed Matter Physics and Materials Science.
- Bill Mitchell did his PhD with Edwin Jaynes. He conducted research at 3M and was with the University of Minnesota.
- Louis Shen worked in Norberg's group in NMR and Low Temperature Physics for his PhD work. He became an Assistant Prof. at Wesleyan University and later a Professor of Physics at California State University, Fullerton where he was Chair for 12 years. He joined the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology as Head of Planning & Coordination Office in 1997.
- Chia-Wei Woo did his PhD with Feenberg on Quantum many-body theory. He later conducted research on many-body theory, statistical mechanics, liquid crystals, low temperature physics, and surface physics. He was the founding President of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and President of San Francisco State University. He earned Fellowships of the American Physical Society and the California Academy of Sciences as well as a Sloan Research Fellowship. He is currently planning a new private university in China focusing on UCSD-style liberal arts education and graduate programs.
- Walter Massey completed his PhD with Feenberg. He was Director of Fermilab and subsequently Director of the National Science Foundation.
