Robert Ehrlich (physicist)

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This article is about the physicist. For the entrepreneur, see Robert Ehrlich (businessman). For the politician, see Bob Ehrlich.
Robert Ehrlich in 2020

Robert Ehrlich (born 1938) is an American physicist. He has a Bachelor of Science (ϕβκ)[1] from Brooklyn College (1959), and a Ph.D. in physics from Columbia University (1964), where he participated in the Nobel prize-winning muon neutrino experiment.[2] From 1963 to 1966 he held a postdoctoral position at the University of Pennsylvania and from 1966 to 1974 he was Assistant Professor at Rutgers University. In 1974 he accepted a position as Associate Professor at SUNY New Paltz, where he served as acting chair of the Department of Physics. From 1977 until his retirement in 2013, he was Professor of Physics at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, having served 15 years as department chair.[3]

Ehrlich was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society in 1991, "for application of physics to aspects of the nuclear arms race and contributions to public education in physics."[4] Ehrlich's primary area of scholarship is particle physics. He is also well known for his contributions to science education, particularly with simple physics demonstrations and computer applications in physics education. Another area of his scholarship is energy and the environment, specifically nuclear arms control and renewable energy. His books have been translated into six languages,.[5]

Publications[]

Other scholars have cited Ehrlich's 20 published books and over 100 articles approximately 800 times. These citations are available via his Google Scholar page (see below under External Links). The articles are principally on particle physics.[6] The books mainly deal with science for the general public, physics education, energy and the environment, and nuclear arms control.

Science Education[]

Turning the World Inside Out and 174 Other Simple Physics Demonstrations. Princeton University Press, 1991. Reviewed by Stewart E. Brekke.[7] Also available in Japanese and Portuguese translations.

The cosmological milk shake: a semi-serious look at the size of things. New Brunswick, NJ : Rutgers University Press, 1995, ©1994. Also available in Finnish and Japanese translations.

What if you could unscramble an egg?. Rutgers University Press, 1998. Reviewed by Brooke Ignatowski.American Scientist 84, 6, (1996): p.588. [8]

What If?: Mind-Boggling Science Questions for Kids. John Wiley & Sons, 1998. Also available in a Japanese translation.

Nine Crazy Ideas in Science: A Few Might Even Be True. Princeton: Princeton University Press 2002. Reviewed by Andrzej Stasiak.[9] Also available in Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, and Portuguese translations.

Eight Preposterous Propositions: from The Genetics of Homosexuality to The Benefits of Global Warming. Princeton University Press, 2003. Reviewed by Andrzej Stasiak[10] and by Walter Gratzer.[11] Also available in a Japanese translation.

Why Toast Lands Jelly-side Down: Zen and the Art of Physics Demonstrations. Princeton University Press, 1977. Review by Jim Jardine.[12]

Physics and Computers: Problems, Simulation and Data Analysis. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1973. Reviewed by Harwood G. Kolsky.[13]

CUPS Project[]

Together with his Mason colleague Maria Dworzecka and [14] of the University of Maryland, Ehrlich was a director of the NSF-funded "Consortium for Upper-Level Physics Software (CUPS)"[15][16] The project involved an international team of 29 physicists.[17] It generated nine books published by John Wiley & Sons and 27 simulations covering many of the areas of junior-senior courses for undergraduate physics majors.[18] All nine of the books have been translated into Japanese, and one has been translated into Italian. Three of the simulations have won awards.[19][20][21] All the programs have now been placed on the Internet Archive Software Collection and can be run from that site.[22] At the invitation of UNESCO, workshops on the CUPS software were conducted in Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and the United Arab Emirates.[23]

Environmental and energy scholarship[]

Renewable Energy: A First Course. Boca Raton: CRC Press: Taylor & Francis Group, 2012. Reviewed by Cameron Reed.[24] Also available in a second edition (jointly with Harold Geller), 2018. Third edition (with Harold Geller and J. Robert Cressman) expected in 2022.

Perspectives on Nuclear War And Peace Education. New York : Greenwood Press, 1987.

Waging Nuclear Peace: The Technology and Politics of Nuclear Weapons. SUNY Press, 1985. Reviewed by Rick Sincere[25] Also reviewed by John D. Constable[26][27]

Tachyon Research and Education[]

Since the 1990's Ehrlich has investigated the possible existence of tachyons, that is, subatomic particles that travel faster than the speed of light in vacuum, about which much has been written.[28] He has published extensively in this area,[29] and is awaiting further results from the KATRIN experiment, whose initial results agree with both the standard neutrino mass hierarchy and his exotic 3 + 3 model which includes a tachyonic neutrino.[30][31] Ehrlich has written a book on tachyons intended for non-experts, and is under contract with CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group to publish it. Ehrlich has also created educational videos about tachyons and other subjects, which can be found on his web site “The Tachyon Nexus”[32] and also on YouTube[33][better source needed]

Personal life[]

Ehrlich has been married to his wife Elaine since 1961. They have two sons and two grandchildren. He is a founding member and Past President of George Mason University's Retired Faculty Association,[34] and currently serves as their Webmaster and Program Planning Chair.[35]

References[]

  1. ^ "Officers & Faculty". Phi Beta Kappa. October 17, 2013.
  2. ^ Danby, G.; Gaillard, J-M.; Goulianos, K.; Lederman, L. M.; Mistry, N.; Schwartz, M.; Steinberger, J. (July 1, 1962). "Observation of High-Energy Neutrino Reactions and the Existence of Two Kinds of Neutrinos". Physical Review Letters. 9 (1): 36–44. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.9.36 – via APS.
  3. ^ "Robert Ehrlich | GMU College of Science". science.gmu.edu.
  4. ^ "APS Fellow Archive". www.aps.org.
  5. ^ "64095526". viaf.org.
  6. ^ "all publications – The Tachyon Nexus".
  7. ^ The Science Teacher, v.58, no.3 (March 1991): p.71-72. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24145614
  8. ^ "What If You Could Unscramble an Egg? - ProQuest". www.proquest.com.
  9. ^ EMBO Reports 2 (2001): p.978-978. https://www.embopress.org/doi/full/10.1093/embo-reports/kve241
  10. ^ EMBO Reports 5 (2004): p.239 https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.embor.7400102
  11. ^ Nature (18/25 December 2003), p.426. https://www.nature.com/articles/426766b.pdf
  12. ^ Physics Education 32, 5 (September 1997) https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0031-9120/32/5/025
  13. ^ Physics Today https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.3128284
  14. ^ https://www.physics.umd.edu/rgroups/ripe/wmm/wmm.html
  15. ^ ^https://web.archive.org/web/20150304034759/http://physics.gmu.edu/~cups/
  16. ^ Described in "Software Consortium Develops Simulations for Nine Physics Courses", Computers in Physics v.6 no.1 (Jan/Feb 1992): p.90-96 https://aip.scitation.org/doi/pdf/10.1063/1.4823049
  17. ^ http://physics.gmu.edu/~cups/authors.html
  18. ^ "CTI-Physics Review: CUPS Packages". www.ph.surrey.ac.uk.
  19. ^ Fourth Annual Awards, Computers in Physics 7 (1993): p.648 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4823240, p.648
  20. ^ Sixth Annual Awards, Computers in Physics 9 (1995) https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4823449 p.595-6
  21. ^ Seventh annual award, Computers in Physics 10 (1996), p.534 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4822497
  22. ^ https://archive.org/details/software?query=Consortium+for+Upper-level+Physics+Software
  23. ^ Ehrlich and Dworzecka, "On the Road to Damascus: Technology, Fear, and Fear of Technology", Journal of College Science Teaching v.27 no.3 (1998): p.179-182. Available via JSTOR https://www.jstor.org/stable/42993513?refreqid=excelsior%3Ae2a8d858d872183074f6bb25860b1fc3
  24. ^ American Journal of Physics v.82 no.6 (2014): p.625. https://aapt.scitation.org/doi/pdf/10.1119/1.4863493
  25. ^ Washington Times (May 2, 1985), with versions republished in the New York City Tribune (September 3, 1986) and in Strategic Review (spring 1985) http://rickreviewsbooks.blogspot.com/2010/01/waging-nuclear-peace-technology-and.html
  26. ^ New England Journal of Medicine (June 6, 1985) https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM198506063122326
  27. ^ An abstract by Jane M. Orient MD (JAMA v.254, no.5 (August 2, 1985): p.682-683 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/399849) confuses Ehrlich's book, which is the one about which she writes, with another book having a similar title but which was written by a different author.
  28. ^ http://www.nu.to.infn.it/Neutrino_Velocity/
  29. ^ http://ehrlich.physics.edu/index.php/tachyon-papers
  30. ^ Ehrlich, Robert (December 31, 2019). "First results of the KATRIN neutrino mass experiment and their consistency with an exotic 3 + 3 model". Letters in High Energy Physics. 2 (4): 4. doi:10.31526/lhep.4.2019.139 – via journals.andromedapublisher.com.
  31. ^ Ehrlich, Robert (2021). "The KATRIN neutrino mass results: An alternative interpretation". arXiv:2106.00681 [hep-ph]. Unknown parameter |url= ignored (help)
  32. ^ "Videos – The Tachyon Nexus".
  33. ^ "YouTube". accounts.google.com.
  34. ^ http://rfa.gmu.edu/
  35. ^ "Officers". Retired Faculty Association. December 11, 2013.

External links[]

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