The Comment Factory

In many ways, it seems as if it was just yesterday that I was getting on a Greyhound bus in Chicago just about 25 years ago during the late summer of 1984. My mom was in tears, as I was departing my hometown to attend Caltech in Pasadena, Ca. at age 17. Traveling across the country on the road was for me a fascinating and novel experience that I would repeat many times. I wanted to be a physicist – to unlock Nature’s most fundamental mysteries, to find meaning in my life, and to contribute positively to humanity. Though the university I chose to further my studies was quite challenging – so was my chosen path. I persevered and graduated with a double major in physics and applied math four years later. I then drove across the country in a 1968 Mustang to attend graduate school in Cambridge (US), breaking down once in Las Vegas (NV). In graduate school, I struggled with a “Holy Grail” thesis studying hydrogen (the most abundant element in the Universe) under high pressures using nuclear magnetic resonance (similar technology to MRI). I received my Ph.D. degree in experimental high pressure physics ten years later (including two years spent for the Masters).

After getting married and moving to New York City to work for a biophysics company for a year, I found an irresistible draw to return to the Southwest and academia. I drove from NYC to Las Vegas, NM in my 1985 Oldsmobile Royale Brougham with a hitched trailer to accept an appointment (with my wife) as an assistant professor. After four years in Las Vegas, NM (which included a stint as Chair of four former departments), my wife and I decided to relocate to Las Vegas NV and accept an appointment again as an assistant professor of physics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) with two children in tow. However, before moving to Nevada, I was offered a Summer Faculty Fellowship with the Office of Naval Research in Washington where I drove from Las Vegas NM to Washington DC (and back) in a 1995 Plymouth Neon, and then driving from Las Vegas NM to Las Vegas NV back and forth a number of times until we were more or less settled in the Silver State.

At UNLV, I developed a research program to study matter at extreme conditions of pressure, temperature and radiation. As a member of the High Pressure Science and Engineering Center (HiPSEC) at UNLV, I have made over 100 trips to our facilities at the Advanced Photon Source (APS) in Chicago (the nation’s brightest x-ray source) and other x-ray synchrotron facilities such as the National Synchrotron Light Source in New York, the European Synchrotron Research Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble, France, and the Pohang Light Source (PAL) in Pohang, South Korea to do many of my experiments. Five years later (and blessed with one more wonderful child), I finally achieved a status that many physicists prepare for and seek for many years: I received tenure and promotion to Associate professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

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Few people understand the level of sacrifices required to become a scientist – especially one with a stable job. Though my chosen path was a very difficult one which will never really end, it is one that will give me a lifetime sense of accomplishment and confidence to continue to push back the frontiers of knowledge even more. Just as my many journeys across this enormous nation were not easy, so has my journey of discovery to become a physicist been arduous beginning from asking my chemist father as a little boy about the nature of matter, atoms and photons, to getting tenure at a major University. Along the way, I have contributed fundamental knowledge in the way that our strange and fascinating world works. I have taught hundreds of students about physics, how to view the world and how to solve problems all from a physicist’s point of view. I have also helped dozens of students to perform scientific research – encouraging their natural inborn curiosity –by guiding them to ask good questions and steadfastly preparing to receive answers by performing and analyzing experiments. Some of my students are now training (and have completed training) to be pharmacists, medical doctors, biologists, chemists, mathematicians, engineers, and physicists.

Though too few students nationwide pursue physics as a career, I always tell those who dare to that they will be forever challenged by the infinite mysteries surrounding the interactions between energy and matter (via four fundamental forces) that somehow formed and govern our Universe. I also explain to my nonphysics majors (many of whom initially don’t understand why they need physics) that we are all doing physics every moment of our existence, whether walking, driving a car, operating a

cell phone, using their eyes and ears to see, or just plain thinking by electrically firing the neurons – it is my task to make them aware of it. In performing research, more often than not, more questions are raised than answered but that’s precisely what makes it so fascinating.

Beyond the intellectually-edifying benefits of pure research, much of our economy, well-being, and national security are based upon the contributions made by physicists. Transistors/IC chips, LCDs, LEDs, lasers, CD players, AC current, radio, microwaves, x-ray machines, MRI/NMR, solar, hydroelectic, and nuclear power, HTML, and many other related technologies all came from the efforts of physicists. Today, more than ever, the United States needs to resurrect support for physics and other scientific research as we are woefully slipping in our preeminence in technology and are coasting on great discoveries
made by physicists and other scientists in the past. Much of our economy depends on science and the innovation that scientific inquiry enables.

Sadly, however, when the entire yearly budget of the National Science Foundation is less than what we squander in one month in Iraq, our leaders have the nation’s priorities wrongly set. We need to encourage those rare individuals who won’t take no for an answer, who incessantly question the strange world around them, going as deep (and traveling as far) as necessary to find answers. We also need to encourage more Americans to study the sciences (starting with the foundation of science: physics) as we literally live in a world that exists because of science.

Many people feel that being awarded tenure is akin to having a permanent summer vacation. This is not so. As my own worst critic, I will always seek to better myself as a person, father, husband, researcher, colleague, and professor. As a tenured professor, I have a unique and increasingly rare opportunity to be an intellectual entrepreneur and, perhaps with some help from serendipity and hard work, aid humankind in unimaginable ways. At the very least, I see myself continuing the flame of knowledge and inspiration in physics and hoping to spread this flame as long as I am able just as my professors at Caltech did for me over 20 years ago.