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I was a student of Eyvind’s in the 1970’s. I took both quantum mechanics and quantum field theory from him, and I still have, and still refer to, the notes he distributed for those classes. I then did my thesis work with him as well. All of this served as excellent preparation for a thoroughly enjoyable career. I had decided that high energy theory was not for me, and one of the many great things about Eyvind was that he was willing to take on students with a wide variety of interests. He proposed a study of decay laws in physics as a thesis topic, and this led to my becoming adept with two-level atoms interacting with the radiation field and an initial career in theoretical quantum optics. In the mid-90’s I switched to quantum information, a more mathematical field, and a lot of the mathematics I learned from Eyvind has proven to be very useful there. One of the best decisions I ever made was asking him to be my thesis advisor.
Eyvind has also served for me as a model of what a physics professor should be. What matters are physics and students, which entails taking both the research and educational parts of the job very seriously. In addition, in the choice of research topics, one should follow one’s own instincts and not follow fashion.
I am very grateful for having had the opportunity to know and work with Eyvind. We will all miss him.
~Mark Hillery
For decades after I took Professor Wichmann's Physics 5 series, his voice is the one I would hear whenever I read anything. Professor Wichmann's tests were brutal in that he provided a page that stated each problem and provided just enough space to write the answer. The answer was right or wrong, there was no partial credit. Also, the test sheet did not provide physical constants. I remember one test problem that required knowledge of the mass of a deuteron. I was very proud of myself for guessing correctly that it had one neutron and two protons. A further interesting aspect of the tests is that there were three versions, A, B, and C. The problems were similar on each version, but had small differences. The intent was to catch anyone copying off their neighbor. This seemed to be especially a problem with the ROTC students who all sat together in the back row. RIP Professor Wichmann. May your memory be eternal.
~Greg Vassilakos
Professor Wichmann had a profoundly positive impact on my life. I know I am part of sizeable group in this regard.
I had the honor and good luck of taking Professor Wichmann's Physics 137 series in the 1977-78 school year and it had a profound influence on me. I switched from physics to applied mathematics shortly afterwards -- but that was the right thing for me. Professor Wichmann pushed his "junior physicists" to do their best and work (really, really) hard. I remember early in the first course he said he would be assigning a few problems from the end of each chapter of his Berkeley Physics Course - volume 4 Quantum Mechanics book, but of course we were expected to read the chapter and "do all the problems at the end of each chapter." I had never heard a line like that before -- never mind that as one of four classes 137 with just the assigned problems ended up taking 90%+ of everyone's time.
Very quickly Professor Wichmann had pushed everyone, even the outliers, to realize just how challenging physics can be and how much seeming unrelated fields of math and physics were related, useful, and even necessary to understanding each other. Most of all, he pushed people to work hard and do and expect of themselves their very best. Professor Wichmann led out front and by example. His lectures were well prepared and thought out and, in the time before desktop publishing, Professor Wichmann spent hours doing his 1970s desktop publishing -- X-Acto knife cutting and pasting with tape and rubber cement (?) -- putting together extensive class notes for 137. All this on top of the fact that he had written the book we were using. Practicing what he preached: one could and should always work to improve their output and themselves.
I left physics shortly after 137, but for over 40 years I have internalized what Professor Wichmann taught by both lecture and example -- one could and should always work hard to improve their output and themselves. I am confident he imbued this to many other students over his teaching career.
~David Schwartz
The most educational tests I ever took were part of a University of California graduate course in numerical analysis. In numerical analysis you use a computer to solve mathematical problems. The problems are clear and some exact answer exists, but no one knows what they are. Each answer is like the number Pi, which is an exact number that cannot be written down as the numeral is infinitely long. Pi is not an exception, all numbers in nature share this character.
There are many ways to go from start to finish with these problems, and all ways are approximate. Some are better than others and the crux of the problem--and the crux of the course--lay not in getting the answer or in getting an answer but in understanding various different answers.
The only way to understand all paths was to take all paths, and this was impossible as each was a major undertaking. The test that our Finnish teacher, Eyvind Wickmann, devised required each student to present a card with their name and single 8-digit number punched into it. Nothing more. The number was either right or wrong, and you either got credit or you didn’t.
These problems had no exact solution. There were many “right ways” that approached some result, but all would take an infinite amount of time to get there. The approximate numbers would jump around as they got closer to an answer, so you couldn’t be sure where they were headed.
Each path might differ in what they seemed to be converging to and how quickly they did so. You could only form a best guess by correctly following many paths and then inferring, based on some kind of triangulation between all the answers, the number toward which they were all pointing.
The class had to work together on a kind of “Manhattan Project” in which everyone took a part of the problem. We then collected our work into our single best guess, and everyone would hand this in as our answer. We worked as a team, brainstorming the problem, developing multiple approaches, delegating tasks, supervising our own progress, correcting errors, and critiquing the results.
Professor Wichmann taught the class but played no role in our solutions. Sometimes we would go and speak to him. He mumbled and scribbled things on the board. I don’t think I ever understood anything he said.
The tests were the class and Wichmann created the container in which we taught ourselves. It was the best class I ever had.
Excerpt from a book called Learning Secrets by Lincoln Stoller
General Relativity Theory
Mr. Wichmann in his course in General Relativity gave the only clear operational explanation of the 1st postulate of Special Relativity Theory of which I am aware. That and his firm belief that all of mathematical physics should be derived from testable postulates completely changed the direction of my research.
~J.M. Kingsley III