Undergraduate Alumni on the Web
2020's
Dakotah Tyler is a graduate student in Astrophysics at UCLA and studies exoplanets. Here is a picture of him at a conference at Caltech.
Dakotah Tyler had a BA degree from University of Kentucky and played football there, but decided to go back to school in order to study astrophysics. He got his BS in Physics and Astrophysics and a Minor in Mathematics at the University of Cincinnati in 2020. His faculty mentors were Mike Sitko and Rohana Wijewardhana, and he spent a summer at Harvard in an REU program. He is now in the PhD program in Astrophysics at UCLA.
How I became an astrophysicist
Dakotah's web page from Harvard REU
Dakotah Tyler is a leader of the "Black in Astro" organization
UC alum: From the gridiron to the stars (after losing what mattered most, Dakotah Tyler found a new passion in A&S Physics)
What comes after football? Astrophysics (American Physical Society News article about Dakotah Tyler)
2010's
Madelyn Leembruggen BS Math and Physics (2018) with mentor Rohana Wijewardhana
APS News Article interviews with 2017 Goldwater Award Winners
APS News Article on 2018 Apker Award
APS News Article on Madelyn and Rohana's work with the National Mentoring Commuinity
UC News article describing process applying for Goldwater Award. (2019)
Harvard Grad Student Page (2023)
National Children's Museum Podcast on "Why things float" (2022)
Interview with Madelyn about her work starting WOWStem (2022)
Rachel B. Fernandez BS (2017). Presently in PhD program in Astronomy at University of Arizona
Rachel Fernandez received her PhD in Astronomy from the University of Arizona in 2023, and is now a President's Postdoctoral Fellow at Penn State University.
Professional Web Page, University of Arizona
Cosmic Vanishing Acts: NASA Unraveling the Mystery of Shrinking Exoplanets (2023)
2000's
1990's
1980's
Gilbert "Rip" Collins BS (1986)
Duane Johnson DOE Ames Laboratory and Iowa State University, Distinguished Professor of Materials Science, Physics and Engineering.
Duane Johnson received his BS in Physics in 1980 at the University of Cincinnati. He worked with Frank Pinski in Computational Physics spending one year at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and completed his PhD in 1985. He took postdoctoral positions at the University of Bristol and then the Naval Research Laboratory before beginning a research staff position at Sandia National Laboratories in 1988. In 1997 he became Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Physics at the University of Illinois. He then became the Chief Research Officer at DOE Ames National Laboratory in 2010 and was named the F. Wendell Miller Professor in Materials Science and Engineering. He was named a Fellow of the APS in 2003.
Materials Science, Iowa State University, Distinguished Professor
1970's
Before 1970
Apollo 11 Landing.
George Sherard, Jr grew up in Cincinnati and went to Walnut Hills High and received his BS in Physics from the University of Cincinnati in (1940). After talking to Herman Branson (an african american graduate student and Boris Podolsky) he decided to continue working towards a PhD in Physics. Unfortunately, World War II intervened and so he quickly finished his MS in Physics and went to New Jersey to work on signal processing. The link below has excerpts from his history working with the Apollo program at NASA.
Oral history of his work with NASA/Apollo Missions and GE Aerospace
Cover of NASA History of the Centaur Rocket and Liquid Hydrogen 1958-2002.
Interview with Dunholter about Paul Herget.
Wall of Honor, Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.
NASA History of development of Liquid Hydrogen as Propellant
Remarks on Dunholter by Paul Herget in AIP Oral History
Report on Strength of Materials at Cryogenic Temperatures, WPAFB/General Dynamics
Taming Liquid Hydrogen: The Centaur Upper Stage Rocket 1958-2002
Paul Herget with first UC Mainframe Computer (circa 1958).
Paul Herget was born in OTR and attended Withrow High School in Cincinnati and after several years went to UC and received his BA degree in Mathematics. After graduating he took a job at the Cincinnati Observatory and went to graduate school part time. He was highly skilled in numerical calculations. By 1933 while he received his MA degree in Mathematics he considered himself an astronomer. His PhD thesis was on the calculation of orbits using vectors, with all the calculations done by hand. After spending one year at UC Berkeley he returned to UC taking a faculty position with primary appointment at Cincinnati Observatory. He was the director of the minor planet center at the Cincinnati Observatory from 1947 to 1978. He was considered a primary instigator of computational physics, eventually bringing the first IBM mainframe to Cincinnati in 1958 (see picture above). He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences winning the James Craig Watson Medal in 1965. He was interviewed by the AIP (see below) describing his many years of effort in developing computational techniques.
History and Obituary, National Academy of Sciences. Wikipedia entry
Website of his Life and Work. Early Influence on Computational Physics
1965 NAS James Craig Watson Medal
AIP Oral History, Part 1. AIP Oral History, Part 2
New York Times Obituary, August 29, 1981. Physics Today Obituary, January 1982.
50th Anniversary at UC of First Computer. Cincinnati History of Paul Herget