Bill Fickinger's Web Site
June 2009 Email:
wfickinger@aol.com
Welcome. Thanks for
visiting.
I am a retired
professor of physics, living in Cleveland Ohio USA. You will find here links to
my major interests, along with some genealogical and other information on the
Fickinger, Etchingham, Biechele, and Golding families.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Currently, summer
2009, I am working on a biography of Dayton C. Miller, who was chair of the
Case physics department from 1893 until 1937.
He was the first American to make medical x-rays, he was an expert on
the physics of musical acoustics, and in the 1920’s he was central to the
debate about the correctness of Einstein’s theory of relativity. The book title will be:
X-rays, Flutes, and Aether: Dayton Miller’s Physics
I hope to get it
published by the end of 2009. Stay tuned.
------------------------------------------------------------------
In 2007 my history of the CWRU physics department was published:
“Physics at a Research University
Case Western Reserve 1830 – 1990”
This is a history of the physics
research done by the faculty and students of CWRU and its parent
institutions. Highlights of the work done by over 100 researchers are
described at a level so that the general reader can understand qualitatively
how and why the research was done, and the more technical reader can appreciate
some more quantitative details. The book ends with a
"post-script" chapter which describes research performed from 1990 to
2005. Lists of the names of physics graduates, including titles of
graduate theses, appear as appendices.
PDF files of the entire book can be found at www.phys.case.edu/history
--------------------------------------------------------------------
8
more links:
Case Collection of Physics
Instruments: www.phys.cwru.edu/ccpi
CWRU Chapter of American Association of
University Professors: www.cwru.edu/affil/aaup
CWRU Physics Department: www.phys.cwru.edu
WJF page on department site: http://www.phys.cwru.edu/faculty/index.php?fickinger
Cleveland Peace Action: www.peaceactioncleveland.org
If your browser is slow in bringing in pictures,
you can Click on the empty box (sometimes).