Shane Larson, who got his BS degree from Oregon State in 1991 is giving a Science Pub about the LIGO discovery of gravitational waves at Old World Deli 6-8PM on April 12. People interested in slides from his talk can find them at:
Prof. Shirley Dow Stekel, who graduated from our department in 1961 has sent us the following eye-witness history of the move to Weniger hall. You can find more about Prof. Stekel at our blog post about her recent visit.
THE OSC PHYSICS DEPARTMENT MOVES TO WENIGER HALL
Shirley Dow Stekel
February 2016
When I arrived on the Oregon State College campus as a freshman in September 1954, the Physics Department was housed in a building attached to the old (1913) Mines Building (now ‘Batcheller Hall’). This addition, constructed in 1928 for the growing Physics Department, was referred to as the ‘Physics Building’. After the Physics Department moved to its current location, this building was named ‘Covell Hall’. My recollection of the Physics Building is that it seemed very old fashioned with an abundance of very dark woodwork. My brother1 has a similar recollection of this building.
In 1954, the Physics Department office was on the main floor with two lecture rooms at the end of the hall; a larger one and a smaller one. A few professors had offices on this floor, but office space was scarce and those who taught specialty labs had a desk in their lab instead of a proper office. The specialty labs were on the second floor. Some non-physics offices, such as the School of Science Office and the KOAC radio station studio and record library were on the third floor. By this time, the KOAC transmitter had been moved to an off campus site. The basement was also well used. The General Physics lab and Modern Physics lab were there and I think there was a small shop. One otherwise unused lab room with large wooden tables and wooden chairs served as a “home room” for all of the graduate students. (When I was a first year graduate student, I found the library a much quieter and more pleasant place to study.) At this time, there was no calculus-based Engineering Physics course so the first year ‘General Physics’ course was large. With only one room for the many lab sections, Saturday morning lab sessions were needed to accommodate all of the students. (Space was short all over campus and many multi-section, 3-credit courses had Tue-Thur-Sat AM sections. I remember having General Physics labs and Calculus classes on Saturday mornings.)
An essay in the Physics Department section of the OSU archives contains the following description: “During the last decade of occupancy of the Physics Building, the department was in serious need for space. Office space was so short that two full professors occupied a 10 foot by 10 foot room and many of the faculty had their offices in teaching laboratories. There was not even a laboratory for staff research and only four for graduate student research. Furthermore, there were no recitation rooms in the Physics Department, although the three lecture rooms served as recitation rooms at times.”2
A new building for the Physics Department was a wonderful idea! We watched the new building slowly rise via ‘lift-slab’ construction. First the support pillars were installed, then concrete was poured to form a floor and then that floor was slowly raised by electric motors placed atop each pillar. And then the process was repeated. Something malfunctioned when one of the floors had been lifted about two feet and the floor broke into two parts. This floor was repaired and was successfully lifted on the second attempt. In March of 1959, the Physics Department began to move into the new ‘Physics – Chemistry’ building although painters were still working inside. Graduate students were expected to stay on campus during Spring Break to help with the moving. I was a first year graduate student at this time. Much of the small equipment was loaded onto lab carts and pushed up to the new building. The large freight elevator in the new building was much appreciated when a load needed to be taken to one of the upper floors.
The new building was a delight with lots of windows, good lighting, bright new labs with storage closets, many comfortable offices and a library/meeting room. Each professor had his own office and other offices were shared by two graduate students. My own desk and a blackboard on the wall provided a fine place to study and grade papers. It was a great morale booster to have office space.
In 1961, the second half of the building was completed to form the building now called ‘Weniger Hall’. Other departments shared the space in the new building. These included the School of Science, Science Education, General Science and Agricultural Chemistry. “Built at a cost of five million dollars, this unit gives Oregon State University one of the largest and best equipped science teaching and research centers in the United States.” “Part of the construction and equipment cost was paid by generous grants from the U.S. Public Health Service and by the National Science foundation.”3
The dedication for the Physics – Chemistry Building was held on October 26 and 27, 1962. The distinguished guests included two representatives from the Oregon State System of Higher Education and the previous Dean of the Oregon State University School of Science. The three invited speakers for this event were well known scientists: Dr. Edwin M. McMillan, Director of the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory and Nobel Prize winner; Dr. Willard F. Libby, former Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission and Nobel Prize winner; and Dr. Homer Newell Director of Space Sciences for the National Aeronautics and Space Adminstration.3
‘Weniger Hall’ became the official name of the Physics – Chemistry Building in 1966. This name change honored Dr. Willibald Weniger who spent most of his career at Oregon State College. Dr. Weniger was born in Milwaukee, WI and received his PhD in 1908 from the University of Wisconsin. “The Department of Physics at Oregon Agricultural College was started in 1908 with the appointment of Dr. Willibald Weniger as Assistant Professor of Physics by President William Jasper Kerr. Dr. Weniger was at that time, the only PhD on the staff of the College.” 4 After an absence during World War I, he returned to Oregon State College in 1920 as head of the Physics department. Dr. Weniger was Dean of the Graduate Division at the time he reached mandatory retirement age in 1949.5 After retiring from Oregon State College, he spent four years at the University of Alaska. He passed away in Corvallis on March 14, 1959.5
Alum Brandon Brown (Ph.D. 1997) has written a biography of Max Planck entitled Planck – Driven by vision, broken by war, published by Oxford 
University Press in 2015. Brandon’s long-standing interest in science communication led him to the Science Communication program at UC Santa Cruz after he earned his Ph.D. from OSU. He joined the faculty at the University of San Francisco in 1998, and is now is Professor of Physics. Asked where the idea for the book came from, Brandon said, “I’ve been fascinated by Max Planck’s life and times for at least the last 27 years or so. As a student, I was struck by the sadness in his old face and by the fact that he made his most important contribution in his 40’s. That’s not so common, especially in physics.” Brandon’s website for his book is http://www.brandonrbrown.net/.
Alumna Shirley Dow Stekel, BA ’58, MA ’61 came back to visit the Physics department on September 29. Prof. Stekel is retired from the Physics Department at the University of Wisconsin – Whitewater and visited with her husband Frank and daughter and son-in-law. After her first year classes, she was the only woman in her math and physics classes and remembers walking into the old Men’s gym for mass exams and feeling very alone. She says “I just liked physics and math, and wanted to see how far I could go with it. But another very important part of feeling comfortable on campus were my friends at Winston House. There were 30 -35 women who lived and worked together there. Most quarters, I had a class with someone from the House. German, American Literature, Music Appreciation, etc. provided enough credits for a BA.” She notes that she had room for extra courses because she was not required to take ROTC.
Alum Katrina Hay (PhD 2008) has published a book for children, Little Bear’s Big Night Sky. Katie is a professor at Pacific Lutheran University in Washington. Describing her book, Katie says “My outreach goal is to spread a positive message about science to as many kids as possible. This book invites young children to wonder and think big” .
The book is being promoted on Kindle and Amazon.More information here.
Prof. Shane Larson, who now holds a joint position between the Northwestern Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, CIERA and the Adler Planetarium was recently elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society for his work in public education and outreach:
“”For impacting science and society through the integration of public engagement and research, and for empowering generations of future scientists by his example.”
You can follow his exploits as @sciencejedi on Twitter
Your chair (Heidi Schellman) knows Shane through her Northwestern days and asked him to bring us up to date on what he’s been doing since then. We hope this will be the first in a series of Alumni profiles.
Who are you? What do you do both scientifically and for outreach?
Shane Larson: I got my BS in Physics at Oregon State in 1991. I did my masters and my PhD at Montana State University (1999), then postdocs at JPL, Caltech, and Penn State. I was a professor for two years at Weber State University starting in 2006, then I was at Utah State University where I was tenured in 2013. For the past two years I’ve been a member of CIERA (Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics) at Northwestern University, and also a member of the Department of Astronomy at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago.
I’m married to a PhD astrophysicist (Michelle). We have a 9-year old daughter (Kate), and three cats (Sierra, Xeno, and Lyra — yes, I’m the “crazy cat man” in the family!).
My research is in gravitational wave astrophysics; I was trained originally in classical relativity, but my interests and work lie at the boundary between gravity and astrophysics. Most of my physics friends call me an “astronomer” and most of my astronomy friends call me a “physicist” so it all works out perfectly, because they all think they can talk to me about the science that flows back and forth across the divide between the two disciplines.
My primary research is on ultra-compact binary star systems — binary stars comprised of two stellar remnants (white dwarfs, neutron stars, or black holes) in orbits roughly 1000 seconds long. This are excellent sources of gravitational waves (many systems are already known), and will be observable by future gravitational wave detectors in space. What my group is most interested in is what the detection of a handful of these sources can tell us about the entire population of remnants that fill the stellar graveyard of the Milky Way — these binary star systems are one piece of the fossil record of the stellar evolutionary history of the galaxy.
I do a lot of different outreach things. I blog regularly at writescience.wordpress.com on a variety of topics in science. When I was at Utah State University, I helped create and directed a program called “Science Unwrapped” which is a monthly lecture series coupled with face-to-face interactions with scientists and science activities after the lecture. The purpose of this effort was to bring a strong human dimension to our work as scientists. It was amazingly successful — from 2009-2013 we hosted 36 events with a total attendance of almost 12,000 people!
In my role at the Adler, almost all of my activities are public facing. Our professional astronomers spend time out in the museum every day talking with visitors and answering questions. We also do special events; one of my favorite things I get to do is watching science or science fiction movies here in Chicago, then answer science questions after the show for the people who came to the movie.
In addition to being a “professional astronomer” I’m also an active “amateur astronomer.” I build my own telescopes (I have a 12.5″ Dobsonian named “Equinox” and a 22″ Dobsonian named “Mariner”), and like to go to star parties whenever I can — I often go to the Oregon Star Party and the Table Mountain Star Party in Washington every summer. When I go to star parties, I almost always end up giving some kind of public lecture about astronomy and science; I’ve done about 100 talks in the last decade.
When were you at OSU and what do you remember about us?
I remember lots! When I came to OSU, I was initially in mechanical engineering, but I changed my major to physics three days after starting an astronomy class with David Griffiths. I’ve written a bit about that at my blog here: http://wp.me/p19G0g-7j
All my classes and professors in physics are still very vivid in my mind. I had intro physics with Carl Kocher, and modern physics with Janet Tate; I had E&M with Cliff Fairchild, Mechanics with Swenson, and Math Methods with Corinne Manogue; I had Thermal with John Gardner, and Quantum with Al Stetz.
I did a little bit of research with David Griffiths on simulating impacts in aerogels (the material NASA used on the Stardust mission), and a little bit of research with Corinne Manogue on super-radiance in the Klein-Gordon equation. I spent most of my research days, however, working in Jeanne Rudzki Small’s laser lab in the Biophysics Department. There I worked in “pulsed-laser photoacoustic calorimetry” which is scientist fancy-talk for “we shot proteins with lasers to make them unfold, then we listened to them fold back up again.” 🙂
My early exposures to teaching also came at OSU; I graded Modern Physics for Janet Tate, and I worked with Ken Krane one summer on an NSF Young Scholars grant.
