Share Your Thoughts >
Introduction to quantum mechanics
I was an undergraduate Physics major at Cal, graduating in 1992. As I progressed through my courses, I must admit that I did not typically make an effort to pick one professor over the other or schedule my courses in any particular order. I just took what and whomever came my way. When I took the first semester in our upper division quantum mechanics sequence, Physics 137A, what came my way was Rainer Sachs. He entered the classroom emphatically, a big presence with bushy hair and a loud and clear lecturing voice punctuated with a grumble that accompanied his 'r's. He definitely kept me awake! He taught a spartan course, harmonizing with Gasciorowicz' terse text. The topic immediately appealed to me. I remember distinctly walking out of LeConte Hall after one course, looking toward the Hearst Mining Circle, and realizing everything I saw was described by superpositions of an orthonormal basis of wavefunctions. Soon thereafter, for the first time, I sought out courses specifically taught by my favorite professor. I guess I loved the way he coupled clarity of exposition with a ferocious interest in science and mathematics. The opportunity arose to learn from him about numerical analysis (Mathematics 128, I suppose), and so I gained practical skills in computing the properties of the quantum systems whose physics Rainer had explained to me earlier. Now, thirty-plus year later, what Rainer taught me, how he taught me, and how he taught me to teach, are foundational to my career. I find myself a Berkeley Physics faculty member, teaching quantum mechanics to new generations of students. And while my speciality of experimental atomic physics is a bit far from Rainer's specialization in theory and mathematics, the intuition I gained under Rainer's tutelage regarding quantum phenomena and their numerical simulation benefits me daily.
~Dan Stamper-Kurn
Learning general relativity
In my first year of graduate school (in mathematics) at Berkeley, back in 1976, I had the good fortune to be assigned to Ray as a TA for first-term calculus. Ray was without a doubt the best traditional calculus teacher I ever met, with crystal clear board work and a voice and classroom manner that was impossible to ignore. If you have ever had the pleasure of sitting in on a physics class taught by David Griffiths, Ray was every bit as good. At the time, I was considering trying to learn general relativity, so I asked Ray for advice. I pointed out that both the math and physics departments had relativity courses in the catalog, and asked him which he would recommend. His response: It doesn't matter; I teach them both. It did, in fact, matter. He taught the physics course using the classic text by Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler (MTW), and I had the pleasure of working my way through that enormous text over two terms as an independent study project under Ray's supervision. Ray never told me what to do; it was up to me to ask questions. But no matter what I asked, he could answer immediately. I then had the equal pleasure of taking the first course taught out of his (together with Wu) graduate math text on GR, covering much the same content in a completely different language. So I learned to be bilingual, a theme that would serve me well throughout my later career. Ray agreed to supervise my dissertation. With Ray's encouragement, I wound up spending a couple of years in Europe, first in Germany, with one of the best relativity groups in the world, then in France, with one of the best relativists in the world, whom I had met in Germany. When I finally returned to Berkeley, I had essentially completed the computation; all that was left was to write it up. Again, it was up to me to ask questions. Again, every question was answered immediately. I have been fortunate to have had a productive career in mathematical relativity, landing one of the few relativity jobs at the time that was in a mathematics department. A good thing, as my wife -- also a relativist -- was hired in the physics department. We have spent much of our careers jointly trying to teach others, both students and faculty, to bridge the gap between these two disciplines, as Ray accomplished in his career. Thank you, Ray, for encouraging me in my early career, and for making it possible.
~Tevian Dray, Professor of Mathematics Emeritus, Oregon State University