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Howard Georgi
Born January 6, 1947, in San Bernardino, California, Georgi was an undergraduate at Harvard in Chemistry and Physics from 1964-67, received a PhD from Yale in 1971 under Charles Sommerfield. Returning to Harvard, he was a postdoc, a Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows, joined the faculty in 1976 as an Associate Professor and was promoted to Professor in 1980. He served as department chair from 1991-94, and is now a Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics. He was a Senior Fellow in the Society of Fellows for 15 years before he resigned in 1998 to become Master of Leverett House. His work in particle theory has involved many aspects of the standard model, particularly QCD and grand unified theories. The latter were first constructed by Georgi and Sheldon Glashow in 1973. Much of Georgi's research has been in collaboration with his many graduate students, a group that includes four of the outstanding women in particle theory: Sally Dawson, Ann Nelson, Lisa Randall and Elizabeth Simmons. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Physical Society and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He received the Sakurai Prize from the APS in 1995, the Dirac Medal from the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics in 2000 and the Pomeranchuk Prize from the Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics - Moscow in 2006. In addition to his research interests, Georgi is active in physics education and in the status of women and minorities in physics. He has served in the Chair line of the Division of Particles and Fields of the APS, the executive committee of the APS Forum for Education, the APS committee on the status of women in physics, as an external advisor to the Hunter College Gender Equity Project, and on the Advisory Board of Boston University Women in Science and Engineering. He co-chaired the NRC committee on women in science and engineering from 1996-99. In 2009 he was elected as a Fellow of the Association for Women in Science. He has served on a number of Harvard committees related to gender issues and was involved in trying to repair the damage done by Larry Summers in his (in)famous remarks about women and science. Below, is a message Georgi sent to Harvard Physics and Chemistry and Physics concentrators shortly after the comments hit the papers.
I am sure that many Physics and Chemistry and Physics concentrators and perhaps other science concentrators are puzzled, as I was, by the spate of news about Larry Summers' recent remarks on women in science. As Head Tutor in Physics and Chemistry and Physics, I thought it might be appropriate to pass along some of my own views on the subject.
It would be foolish to deny that different people have different talents. You have only to look around at your fellow students to see that this is true in physics as in other human endeavors. Given the biological differences between men and women, it would be surprising if the distribution of talents were identical for women and for men, though we have no convincing evidence for important differences in the intellectual realm.
However, having taught physics for many years and having interacted with literally thousands of Harvard physics students, I can say some other things about the issue with equal confidence.
1 - Talent is not a unitary thing. It is multidimensional and difficult to measure or quantify precisely.
2 - Many different kinds of talents are critical to the advancement of physics or any other science interesting enough to be worth doing.
3 - The spread of talents within any group, sex, race, etc, is very large compared to any small average differences that may exist between such groups.
4 - Talent can to be developed and enhanced by education, encouragement, self-confidence and hard work.
For these reasons, I think that it is not particularly useful to talk about innate differences to explain the differences in representation of various groups in physics. Instead, I conclude that we need to try harder to teach our wonderful subject in a way that nourishes as many different skills as possible. |
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David J. Ernst
Professor of Physics
Department of Physics and Astronomy, Vanderbilt University
Professional Preparation
Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Physics - SB, 1965
Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Physics - PhD, 1970
Case Western Reserve University - Research Associate - 1972-1975
Academic Appointments
- Professor, Vanderbilt University, 1992-present
- Adjunct Professor, Fisk University, 2005-present
- Chair, Department of Physics, Vanderbilt, 1992-1995, 1997-1999, 2002-2003
- Visiting Scientist, Jefferson Laboratory, 2001-2002
- Interim Director, W.M. Keck Free Electron Laser Center, Vanderbilt, 1999-2000
- Associate Dean, College of Arts & Science, Vanderbilt, 1995-1997
- Professor, Texas A&M University, 1985-1992
- Associate Director, Center for Theoretical Physics, Texas A&M, 1988-1991
- Co-Director, International Institute for Theoretical Physics, Texas A&M, 1990-1992
- Associate Professor, Texas A&M University, 1980-1985
- Visiting Assistant Professor, University of Washington, 1979-1980
- Assistant Professor, Texas A&M University, 1975-1980
- Research Associate/Instructor, Case Western Reserve University, 1972-1975
- Assistant Professor/ Professor, Centro de Investigacion y de Estudios Avanzados del Instituto Politecnico Nacional, Mexico, 1970-1972
Related Publications
- . D.C. Latimer and D.J. Ernst, "Physical region for three-neutrino mixing angles," Phys. Rev. D 71, 017301 (2005).
- . D.C. Latimer and D.J. Ernst, "Neutrino oscillations: measuring θ13 including its sign," Phys. Rev. C 71, 062501(R) (2005).
- . D. C. Latimer, J. Escamilla, and D. J. Ernst, "Measuring the mass of a sterile neutrino with a very short baseline reactor experiment, "Phys. Rev. C 75, 042501 (R) (2007).
- . D.C. Latimer, J.Escamilla, and D.J.Ernst,"Detecting CP violation in a single neutrino oscillation channel at very long baselines," Phys. Rev. C 76, 05502 (2007).
- . J. E. Roa, D. C. Latimer, and D. J. Ernst, "Atmospheric, Long Baseline, and Reactor Neutrino Oscillation Data Constarints on θ13," Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 061804 (2009).
Awards
- Texas A&M Association of Former Students Outstanding Teacher Award, 1983
- Fellow, American Physical Society, 1985-present
- Alexander Heard Distinguished Professor, Vanderbilt University, 2002-2003
- Affirmative Action and Diversity Initiative Award, Vanderbilt University, 2005
- Fellow, National Society of Black Physicists, 2009-present
Synergistic Activities
National Society of Hispanic Physicists
President, 2008-
Secretary, 1996-2007
Board of Directors, Member, 1996-present
Co-Chair, Program Committee, Joint Annual Conference of the National Society of
Black Physicists and the National Society of Hispanic Physicists, 2005-present
National Society of Black Physicists
Fellow, 2009-present
Co-Chair, Division of Nuclear and Particle Physics, 2006-present
Southeast Universities Research Association
Fellow, 2006-present
Board of Trustees, 1993-present; Executive Committee, 1999-2003, 2010-;
Vice Chair, 1999; Chair, 2000-2001; Past Chair, 2002-2003;Chair-Elect, 2010-
Nominating Committee, Chair, 2003
Working Group on Photon Science in the Southeast, Chair, 1999-2001
Director, Minority Serving Institutions Project, 2006-present
American Physical Society
Executive Board, Council, 2006-2009
Forum on International Physics, Vice Chair, 1998; Chair Elect, 1999; Chair, 2000;
Past Chair, 2001; member, 2006-2009
Committee on International Scientific Affairs, Member, 1999-2002, Chair 2000
Southeast Section, Member, Executive Committee, 2000-2003; Vice Chair, 2007; Chair-
Elect, 2008; Chair, 2009; Past Chair, 2010
Bouchet Award Committee, 2000-2001; Wheatley Award Committee, Chair 2003
American Institute of Physics
Liaison Committee for Under Represented Minorities, 2007-present
American Association of Physicists in Medicine
Member, Sub-Committee on Under-Represented Minorities, 2006-present
Collaborators and Advisors
Collaborators: I. Stancu, U. Alabama; D. C. Latimer, U. Kentucky; Mikkel Johnson, Los
Alamos National Lab; Chin Ming Chen, SJSMIT, Taiwan, J. Escamilla-Roa, Vanderbilt.
Advisors: Graduate, F. M. H. Villars, MIT; Postdoc, R. M. Thaler, Case Western Reserve
Mentored Graduate Students (last known employer)
Robert McLeod, Phd (1976), Wayland, MA, High School
John McClain, MS (1978), PhD (1981), Texas A&M University
Ann Fitchard, PhD (1982), Oil Exploration, Houston, TX
Gregory Parnell, MS (1980), PhD (1983), Rand Corporation, Santa Monica, CA
Chahriar Assad, Texas A&M, MS (1984), Hughes Aircraft, Los Angeles, CA
Dharam Ahluwalia, MS (1984), Phd (1989), Canterbury U., Christchurch, New Zealand
Charles Albert, MS (1984), PhD (1989), Rundle Inc., Austin, TX
Chin Ming Chen, MS (1985), PhD (1990), St. John & St. Mary Institute of Technology,
Taiwan
Steven Jacobson, PhD (2001), GAC Inc., Newport News, VA
Lei Guo, MS (2001), PhD (2004), Los Alamos National Lab, Los Alamos, NM
Jesus Escamilla Roa, PhD (2008), Vanderbilt University
Bernadette Cogswell, PhD (2014)
Postdoctoral Fellows
David Giebink (1992-1995), industry;
David Latimer (2003-2005), University of Kentucky;
Jesus Escamilla Roa (2009-present), Vanderbilt University |
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Eric Mazur
Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Harvard University. An internationally recognized scientist and researcher, he leads a vigorous research program in optical physics and supervises one of the the largest research groups in the Physics Department at Harvard University.
After obtaining a Ph.D. degree in experimental physics at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands in 1981, Dr. Mazur came to Harvard University in 1982. In 1984 he joined the faculty and obtained tenure six years later. Dr. Mazur has made important contributions to spectroscopy, light scattering, the interaction of ultrashort laser pulses with materials, and nanophotonics.
In 1988 he was awarded a Presidential Young Investigator Award. He is Fellow of the Optical Society of America and Fellow of the American Physical Society, and has been named APS Centennial Lecturer during the Society's centennial year. In 2007 Mazur was appointed Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar. In 2008 Mazur received the Esther Hoffman Beller award from the Optical Society of America and the Millikan Medal from the American Association of Physics Teachers. Dr. Mazur has held appointments as Visiting Professor or Distinguished Lecturer at Princeton University, Vanderbilt University, the University of Leuven in Belgium, National Taiwan University in Taiwan, Carnegie Mellon University, and Hong Kong University.
In addition to his work in optical physics, Dr. Mazur is interested in education, science policy, outreach, and the public perception of science. He believes that better science education for all -- not just science majors -- is vital for continued scientific progress. To this end, Dr. Mazur devotes part of his research group's effort to education research and finding verifiable ways to improve science education. In 1990 he began developing Peer Instruction a method for teaching large lecture classes interactively. Dr. Mazur's teaching method has developed a large following, both nationally and internationally, and has been adopted across many science disciplines.
Dr. Mazur has served on numerous committees and councils, including advisory and visiting committees for the National Science Foundation, has chaired and organized national and international scientific conferences, and presented for the Presidential Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology. He serves as consultant to industry in the electronics and telecommunications industry. In 2006 he founded SiOnyx, a company that is commercializing black silicon, a new form of silicon developed in Mazur's laboratory. Mazur is currently Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board for SiOnyx. Mazur is Chairman of the Instructional Strategy Advisory Group for Turning Technologies, a company developing interactive response systems for the education market. He also serves on the Scientific Advisory Panel for Allied Minds, a pre-seed investment company creating partnerships with key universities to fund corporate spin-outs in early stage technology companies, and on the Scientific Advisory Board for the Lifeboat Foundation, a nonprofit nongovernmental organization dedicated to encouraging scientific advancements.
Dr. Mazur is author or co-author of 225 scientific publications and 12 patents. He has also written on education and is the author of Peer Instruction: A User's Manual (Prentice Hall, 1997), a book that explains how to teach large lecture classes interactively. In 2006 he helped produce the award-winning DVD Interactive Teaching.
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