Bill Fickinger’s
biographical links.
Here is a link to my university
physics department, so you can see
where I've been for the past 38 years; or go directly to the faculty section to find
me.
Here is a link to my CV which lists
publications and things like that.
Here is a link to the CWRU
Chapter of the American Association of University Professors.
I was a
member of its Executive Committee for many years. In 2004, I was awarded the
“Robert E. Kennedy Award for Academic Freedom”, by the Ohio Conference of the
AAUP in recognition of my work with the CWRU Chapter.
Another website
concerns the history of the CWRU physics department. It includes a section on some old letters in
our archives, a section on some of our historical acoustics research
instruments, and a section which contains the entire text of my 2006 book on
the history of the department.
Here is a short biographical note:
Born New York City in 1934. Moved
to Rhode Island in 1942. Through parochial
schools in Providence and Edgewood, R.I.; graduated from LaSalle Academy in
1951. To Manhattan College in Riverdale, N.Y. (the Bronx) to major
in physics; graduate in 1955.
Then to Yale University for a PhD in experimental particle physics; awarded in 1961. Dissertation: Proton Proton Interactions at 2 BeV Kinetic Energy. (An experiment in the twenty-inch hydrogen bubble chamber at Brookhaven National Laboratory.) Developed expertise with bubble chamber reconstruction and analysis software. Worked with Keith Robinson on this experiment.
First teaching position: University of Kentucky 1961-1962 - working on bubble chamber experiments. Installed analysis software at Oak Ridge and Texas A&M. To Centre d'Etudes de Saclay in Paris in 1963 to work on their data analysis system: TVGP, GRIND, etc. Published series of papers on multi-pionic resonances with Saclay-Orsay-Bari-Bologna Collaboration.
To Brookhaven in 1965 to work on pi n interactions with Robinson and the Salant Group. Then to Vanderbilt University to help set up a new bubble chamber group. Experiments at Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago; we did some antiproton-deuterium work and some measurements of asymmetries in polarized proton interactions.
To the newly federated Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland in September 1967, joining up once again with Keith Robinson. For about 15 years we continued with bubble chamber work, largely concerning the properties of multipion resonances. We moved to counter experiments (wire chambers, scintillators, etc.) at Brookhaven, first in collaboration with Mark Sakitt of BNL and then with a multi-university collaboration led by Lee Roberts of Boston University. Most of our work on meson and baryon resonances was part of the worldwide effort to establish the quark model for elementary particles, what is now known as the Standard Model.
Starting around 1994, I became director of undergraduate studies in the CWRU physics department, when Lawrence Krauss took over as chairman. This job involved the scheduling of classes and labs; supervision of the majors and their research projects; inauguration of new majors and programs, and a lot of university committee work.
I retired at the end of 1999 and maintain my office at the university, where I enjoy working on some of the archival materials and antique physics demonstration equipment, as well as on these several websites. I have written a history of the physics research done at CWRU from the beginnings in 1829. Gift copies were sent in the spring of 2006 to all our known physics grads. I am actively involved in a university-based peace group, Case for Peace, and in Peace Action Cleveland. I have been a long-time secretary of the CWRU Chapter of the American Association of University Professors.
In 2011 I published “Miller’s Waves: and Informal Scientific Biography”, a book about Dayton Miller, chair of the department from 1893 until 1937, who is best known for his efforts to “get the Michelson Morley ether-drift experiment done right!”.
February 2012.
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