Dear Alumni and Friends

This past year has been one of many highlights and a key milestone in the history of our department. The milestone is the beginning of construction of our new building this past August. Construction has gone very well, and, as I write this, work on the third deck is proceeding. Watch progress on our webcam at www.physics.ohio-state.edu. At the center of the building site is a 180-foot stationary crane. In March of this year I was fortunate to have the opportunity to climb to the top of this magnificent machine. The view was spectacular on a cloudless day.

Hiring of new faculty was very successful last year. P. Chris Hammel, formerly a Fellow of Los Alamos National Laboratory, joined us last summer as Professor and Ohio Eminent Scholar in Experimental Physics. His research program at Ohio State is developing rapidly. See his interview in this issue.

Joining us last summer from Caltech was new Assistant Professor Dongping Zhong, our lead hire in our Selective Investment thrust area of Experimental Biophysics. His laboratories are up and running, with a research focus on fast pulse laser studies of proteins.

Our 2002 Distinguished Alumni Award was presented to Ren Jye Yeh, founder and owner of Bason Computers Inc. of Chatsworth, Calif., a major distributor of computer and electronic components. Dr. Yeh received his Ph.D. in 1982 under the direction of Professor Philip Wigen.

A noted highlight of last summer was the presentation of an honorary doctorate in science to Harold A. McMaster, our 2001 Distinguished Alumni Award winner. Please note the interesting article in this issue.

The Physics Department was featured at new President Karen Holbrook's brunch prior to the Michigan football game in November. The theme was "The Power of Physics," animated by captivating demonstrations by Linn Van Woerkom. The football team was duly energized, going on to beat Michigan and to later capture the national championship. For the moment, the football team outranks the Physics Department (24th in the nation and rising), but this is not the case every year.

I hope you will take special notice of the "Research in the News" section describing a portion of the breadth and depth of physics research at Ohio State. Highlighted are the research of Brian Winer and Richard Hughes on their search for the elusive Higgs boson at Fermilab, that of Tom Lemberger on the unusual high temperature superconductivity of the cuprates, and that of Art Epstein on light-tunable magnets.

This issue also contains an update on the work of Lei Bao in our Physics Education Research group, focusing on response and feedback in the classroom, as well as the story of the first African American physicist, as recounted by Ronald Mickens during his visit to our department.

Our faculty and students again garnered more than their share of awards and honors as described in the news sections of this magazine. Additionally, take note of a new section for 2003 on "Alumni in the News," this year describing Paul Cover"s (B.S. 1955) work with the Inventors Network.

Society of Physics Students President Becky Weber has brought renewed energy and much increased attendance to student SPS events this year with an imaginative and interesting slate of activities. A highlight is the reinstatement of the Sigma Pi Sigma honorary following a long period of dormancy.

During academic year 2002-2003, 23 new bachelors of physics (20 in physics and three in engineering physics) left our doors. Of these, six are going on to graduate school in physics and seven to graduate school in other areas, including astronomy, education, mathematics, medical school and law school, while others are going into the private sector. During the same period, we graduated 20 new Ph.D.s, who have found jobs in areas as disparate as finance and national security in addition to postdoctoral positions at other universities.

In May of last year, 2001 Nobel Laureate Eric Cornell of the University of Colorado gave one of the best Alpheus Smith Lectures in my memory. Speaking on the topic "Stone Cold Science: Bose-Einstein Condensation and the Weird World of Physics a Millionth of a Degree from Absolute Zero," he fascinated a large audience in Hitchcock Hall with the story of his discovery, with Carl Weiman, of Bose-Einstein condensation in atomic gases. This area, with its offshoots, has become one of the hottest areas in physics, with implications not only in fundamental physics but also for quantum computing.

Annual events in the department continue to foster our commun-ity of scholars. The winter party and the Women in Physics lunches are recorded on film for posterity and displayed on these pages.

In closing, I report recent and imminent departures from our ranks. Alan Van Heuvelen, the senior leader of our Physics Education Research group, retired at the end of December, taking a new post at Rutgers University. Retiring in the same month was Shirley Royer, a truly indispensable member of our staff, whose contributions won her a 2002 Distinguished Staff Award. Charles Ebner will retire in June after a 35-year career as a fine researcher and teacher. Howard Dyke will also retire in June after many years of valued service as a senior design engineer in our van de Graaff Laboratory.

I invite you all to visit the department and to see the massive new Physics Research Building rising in the sky.

With best wishes,

William F. Saam

Professor and Chair

Slice of Nobel life

Young physicist prizewinner thrives on innovation Eric Cornell delivered the 2002 Smith Lecture

The May 7, 2002, Alpheus Smith Lecture began with an unabashed attempt by physics Nobel Prize winner Eric Cornell to recruit Ohio State students for graduate study at his home institution, the University of Colorado at Boulder.

"Consider the next hour an infomercial," he said.

In reality, Cornell had even larger goals. He hoped that the annual lecture, sponsored by the Department of Physics and the Graduate School, would not only draw people to the discipline, but also "give people who may never actually do science or technology a sense of what the enterprise is about, because it affects everybody."

He succeeded by giving the audience a slice-of-life view of the events that led to the 2001 Nobel he received for his work with Bose-Einstein condensates-ultra-cold, unearthly materials that defy description as a solid, liquid or gas. Albert Einstein and colleague S.N. Bose hypothesized that such materials could exist back in 1925, but Cornell and physicists Carl Wieman and Wolfgang Ketterle were the first to actually create them in 1995, using lasers and magnetic fields.

Part of what led Cornell to a Nobel at the remarkably young age of 39 was the realization, just out of graduate school in 1990, that his preferred field of atomic physics was a highly competitive one. The area he found most interesting-laser cooling, or using lasers to cool materials to very low temperatures-had already become a booming enterprise.

"It was clear to me that if I wanted to make my mark in that field, I couldn't just work on new ways to use lasers to make things cold; I had to think of good things to do with cold stuff once you had it," he said. A postdoctoral position with Wieman at Colorado led to a permanent job, and the two undertook the challenge of creating a Bose-Einstein condensate just as Ketterle was doing the same thing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

But how do you convince a funding agency that you will be able to make a material that no one has been able to make in 70 years of trying?

"You don't," Cornell said. "You convince them that if they let you try, along the way you're going to work on other technologies with desirable applications."

For instance, this revolutionary control of matter in the laboratory could lead to more precise time measurement, as well as techniques for building tiny devices for nanotechnology. Though Cornell considers the latter a far-off "pie-in-the-sky" application for the technology, he sees better time measurement as paying off in the short term, perhaps in five to 10 years. Satellite navigation, global positioning systems, and the alignment of astronomical telescopes all depend on precise time measurements, he explained.

The Smith Lecture began in 1960 and honors Alpheus Smith, former chair of Ohio "State's Department of Physics and dean of the Graduate School. The lecture is funded by a gift from the Smith family, and is given yearly by physicists renowned not only for their scientific achievements but also for the ability to communicate their scientific breakthroughs to the general public. As of 2002, 17 Smith Lecturers have been Nobel Prize winners.

2002 Distinguished Alumni Award

Dr. Ren Jye Yeh

The winner of the 2002 Department of Physics Distinguished Alumni Award was Dr. Ren Jye Yeh, a 1982 Ph.D. graduate in physics from Ohio State.

Yeh is founder and owner of Bason Computer Inc., Chatsworth, Calif., a major distributor of computer and electronic components.

After receiving his degree in 1982, Dr. Yeh worked on a variety of projects, including nuclear magnetic resonance, thin film processing, semi-conductor type processing and magnetic recording heads, among others, at companies such as General Electric, Memorex and Litton. 

In 1985, he founded Bason Computer Company, starting as a supplier of hard drive controllers. By 1991, the company had grown into one of the largest suppliers of MFM and RLL controllers; soon it evolved into system manufacturing and assembling and then into distribution and wholesale of computer hard drives. In 1999, Dr. Yeh developed tools to put Bason at the forefront of e-commerce technology.

C. Bradley Moore, then-vice president for research, was on hand in May to help give Dr. Yeh his award. He acknowledged excellence in the Department of Physics, and went on to remark, "We also recognize that part of what makes physics research great is the collaborative relationships-among faculty and between faculty and their students. We know that these relationships last a lifetime. In fact, it is this type of relationship between Dr. Yeh and Phil Wigen that is part of the celebration today. Phil is the type of researcher who gets invited to work at other prestigious institutions even after his retirement. (He's been at Caltech this past year and has been invited to return next year.) He's the kind of mentor whose students remember him, continue to collaborate with him and stay in touch with him. Today is the best type of occasion: a recognition of a great friendship, a great collaboration and an alumnus of a great university who went on to do great things with his career."

The Department of Physics Distinguished Alumni Award honors those graduates of the department who have made exceptional contributions in academic and professional fields. Previous recipients include Dr. Edward E. Hagenlocker, Robert B. Smith and Dr. Harold A. McMaster.

Harold A. McMaster Receives Honorary Degree

The Ohio State University 361st Commencement, Summer 2002

Harold A. McMaster, founder of four companies and holder of nearly 100 patents for glass tempering and solar energy, was awarded an honorary doctor of science degree at the 361st Ohio State commencement ceremony, held August 30, 2002. Following the ceremony, a luncheon was held in McMaster's honor at the Schottenstein Center.

Family members able to attend the ceremony included Dr. McMaster's wife, Helen; daughters Jeanine (McMaster) Dunn and Nancy (McMaster) Cobie;  Nancy's husband, Bob Cobie; and Heather (Cobie) Merkle and Rob Merkle.

By revolutionizing the glass industry, creating cost-effective solar panels and inventing the McMaster Rotary Engine, McMaster has dedicated his life to changing the world for the better. His environmentally conscience inventions and innovations simplify the lives of hundreds of thousands of people every day.

Following his graduation from Ohio State with a combined master's degree in physics, mathematics and astronomy in 1939, McMaster accepted a job as a research physicist at the Toledo-based Libbey Owens Ford Glass. After several years with Libbey Glass, McMaster started his own company, Permaglass. By taking advantage of the expanding automotive and electronics market fueled by the growth of the post-World War II economy, Permaglass became an incredibly successful venture. Through a merger with Detroit-based Guardian Industries in 1969, McMaster created the third-largest glass company in the world. Two years after this successful merger, McMaster started another glass company, Glasstech, which now manufactures 80 percent of the world's automotive glass. These ventures, his thirst for knowledge and his continuing need to improve on old techniques have made McMaster the world authority on glass tempering (the process of adding tensile strength to glass by compressing it).

Although he was already providing windshields for the majority of the world's cars, McMaster had bigger dreams. A vacation in sunny Arizona gave McMaster an idea that would solve the energy crisis in the United States without harming the environment. By covering 2,000 square feet of the Southwest desert with solar panels of high efficiency, McMaster believed enough energy could be harvested to satisfy the energy needs of the entire country. By creating Solar Cells, a company that produces cost-effective solar cells, McMaster has taken steps toward making widespread use of clean solar energy a reality.

McMaster works to better the world through inventions and innovations that not only make life easier but also are environmentally sound and cost-effective. Since his early roots as an inventor, McMaster has sought an alternative to the internal combustion engine-a design that hasn't changed since its introduction more than 150 years ago. McMaster believed that there had to be a better way to power a car.

Starting in the 1940s, he began drawing up diagrams and tinkering with models, continuously reworking various designs that would ultimately become the McMaster Rotary Engine (MRE). The MRE is a third lighter than the typical car engine and is being tested for compatibility with alternative fuel sources, such as gaseous hydrogen and oxygen. With such sources, the engine's only output would be power and water.

McMaster's contributions to the world go beyond his numerous inventions. In 1988, McMaster and his wife, Helen Clark McMaster, established The Harold and Helen McMaster Foundation. This foundation supports a variety of philanthropic interests, from higher education and medicine to museums and performing arts. It is estimated that the foundation has collected more than $150 million in donations since its beginning.

McMaster serves as a trustee at Defiance College and as director of the Bowling Green State University Foundation. He was also a former director of the University of Toledo Foundation. He is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board for the Bowling Green State University Center for Photochemical Sciences.

McMaster's ingenuity and entrepreneurial expertise have been recognized with numerous awards, including The Ohio State University Department of Physics Distinguished Alumni Award in 2001, the Ohio Department of Development Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 1998, the National Glass Industry's Phoenix Award in 1993 and induction into both the Engineering and Science Hall of Fame in Dayton and the Ohio Science and Technology Hall of Fame.

More information on the McMaster Rotary Engine and the presentation of the 2001 Distinguished Alumni Award to Harold McMaster can be found in the 2001–2002 Ohio State Physics magazine.