Rod Reid

Personal Stories

• Paul Brady

• I was stunned the previous evening when Virginia called and told me that Rod had passed away Christmas day. He seemed to be on the mend when I saw him at the Jungerman Hall naming ceremony, and when I phoned him later in the summer he did not mention that he was battling something more serious, health-wise.

  Rod was a very private, but a very fine person and a valued physics colleague. He always could spare the time to answer a question from an ignorant experimentalist - even in the middle of the night! I can recall many times, eg, in the '70s, when late at night we would be debugging or taking data in experiments at the Crocker Cyclotron [in Jungerman Hall] and I would walk across to Physics to look up something or get a reference. There, I would find Rod in his office perfecting one of his amazingly-good lectures or working one of his papers into complete perfection! He had a hard time recognizing that a paper could be sort of a progress report, and not the last word on a subject!

  Rod completed his PhD work and degree in 1968 working under Professor Hans Bethe at Cornell. There he developed his nucleon-nucleon potential models, or at least the first versions thereof, which became so widely used.

  Subsequently, Rod further developed the Reid [nucleon-nucleon] potential which for decades was, one could argue, one of the best, if not the best, description of the N-N interaction and was invariably used in nuclear structure and reaction calculations at those energies, and compared to other models. In his work he had carefully assembled and fit his potentials to all the known data [observables] from N-N measurements and the deuteron. As I understood it, one-boson exchange potential model forms were used and allowed extrapolation and interpolation where data were sparse or non-existent. At Crocker we had developed a neutron beam and were extending n-p measurements which were particularly sparse. Thus Rod was someone we would talk to, and who took great interest in the measurements - even in the middle of the night!

  Rod's favorite thing was to throw his sleeping bag and some supplies into the back of his VW bug on a Fri eve or Sat morning and beetle up to Yosemite to hike and sleep over. He would do both the trail hikes and the steep climbs! Virginia told me that later they bought a station wagon that allowed them both to sleep in the back, and make tours from one end to the other, exploring places such as Death Valley.

  Rod would always greet you with a big smile, and provide lots of enthusiasm for whatever topic you brought up. He continued to work and come to the department for many years after his retirement - in the early 90s, I recall - and was greatly missed when poor health intervened with that. I am sure his theoretical colleagues and lunch-mates have much more to add. I am not sure from whence came my special feelings for, and relationship with, Rod - probably those nocturnal discussions - but I, too, greatly regret the passing of this special guy.

  Sincerely, Paul
  Jim Draper
  Paul - you have said very well what many of us feel.
  - Jim

• Shirley Chiang

• Dear Colleagues,

  I was also very sorry to hear this news. Rod was a great help to me when I first started teaching Physics 200B and C. I've still been using some homework problems and solutions which I got from him. I particularly like the figure which accompanies his solution to a version of a problem on the Pole in the Barn relativity paradox, which is attached. It demonstrates both his sense of humor and his artistic talent!

  Best regards. --Shirley

• Larry Coleman

• Colleagues,

  I too am quite saddened by Rod's passing. Like many of you, Rod was one of those first folks who welcomed me into the department family. His insights on teaching and physics were always welcome. His occasional late night drop in visits to my lab in the basement were also welcome and usually full of interesting conversation. I know my students also welcomed his visits and looked forward to the numerous wits and wisdoms that Rod supplied. His theorist's view of what we were doing at 2AM in the lab, always got us thinking more deeply about what is it was we were doing at 2AM!

  For many years there was an informal lunch group - Rod, Bill True, Lin, Wendell , Ching and I would go to lunch at the Silo. A much simpler place back then ( no chain restaurants) and we all usually had our brown bags. These lunch time visits were also full of good conversations on physics, teaching, department and campus politics and whatever other topics one of us would bring up ( such as camping at Yosemite). Those lunches helped me, as "The Kid", become a member of the department and I will always remember them fondly.

  At times such as these I always remember that those who have passed on are not truly gone as long as they live in the hearts and memories of those they left behind.

  Rod Reid will always live in my memory and heart,

  Larry

• Doug McColm
• My earliest memory of Rod was in the late 1960's, when he met my wife and I in the park next to the Willet School. He spoke very enthusiastically about Garrison Keillor's program on PBS radio, the "Prairie Home Companion", and especially about the section of the program called "News from Lake Wobegon". Later I learned that he showed the same enthusiasm for physics.
• Barry Klein

• Especially during my six years as department chair, I had a great deal of contact with Rod regarding teaching, department business, and such. Rod, always a very private person, had values and views I always cherished, so I would often seek him out for his opinions which were always to the point and important to me.

  I believe he was the originator of our Einstein on the bicycle logo, so he had a playful side to him, too.

  Rod Reid epitomized the core strength of our department: solid physics, devotion to our students, and an appreciation of the intellectual diversity of our department.

  I'll always remember Rod as an excellent physicist and department member and, just as importantly, an excellent person who I greatly admired. He will be missed but always remembered.

  Barry

• Perry Gee

• I was really shocked to hear about Rod's death, but I knew that he hadn't been around very much lately, and I wondered how he was. I used to see him all the time when his office was on the 5th floor near Cosmology, but I also saw him walking pretty often near Sycamore Park. Rod and Virginia are neighbors, as they live just half a block from me on Pine and Colby, and I used to see Rod walking pretty often just a couple of years ago.

  But I also knew Rod other than as a neighbor. Rod was my E&M teacher in 1970, when I took my first upper division Physics class. At the time, I didn't know that he had just started teaching at Davis a year or two before: he was just "Dr. Reid" then, and I assumed he had been at Davis forever. As with most young students (I was 19 years old), I assumed that a professor with such knowledge and authority must have been there forever.

  He was a bit of an anomaly then, because 110A had a lot of engineering students in those days, and he was asking us to to do problem sets which a lot of the students thought were too difficult. I remember spending most of a week with Ken Issacs, who was a friend and Physics major (while I was not), trying to solve a current loop problem with a moving conductor in a magnetic field. We put the that effort in just because Dr. Reid seemed to think that we should be able to come up with a solution. To this day, I don't think that an analytic solution is possible, but the challenge was worth the effort!

  I hope that touching the minds of his students and challenging them to excel was enough for Rod to feel fulfilled. He certainly had an effect on me, and on many of his students.

  Perry

• Rajamani Narayanan

• I was very saddened to hear that Rod Reid passed away early Christmas morning. I have learned many things in physics and outside physics from him and I have several fond memories. The first lecture I attended as a graduate student in the physics department at UC Davis was Statistical Mechanics with Dr. Reid. To my total surprise, the first thing he did in class that day was to write my name in big capital letters on the black board and pronounce it perfectly. He told me later that it would have been useful for my classmates! I was his teaching assistant for his graduate quantum mechanics class in my second year at UC Davis and I had many late night discussions with him. He had a habit of coming to the department around 10PM and staying past midnight. We would discuss quantum mechanics, the Terminator series movies (Rod knew how many people were killed in each movie!) and Monty Python's Flying Circus (I am proud of the fact that I introduced Rod to this series) among other things. He would often bring me apple sauce and make me eat it since it was good for me. I fondly remember a Thanksgiving get-together at his house while I was a student. I came back two times after I graduated and met with him both times. My daughter, Sruthi, was six years old during the second visit and we went to a Mexican restaurant in Davis. Rod made sure Sruthi ate seven beans for dinner. The last time I saw Rod in person was during that visit and it was in Yosemite Village. We were leaving after visiting Yosemite and he was getting ready for his full moon hike. I was very proud to see a citation to Rod's work as a graduate student in John Negele's article " Hans Bethe and the Theory of Nuclear Matter" in Physics Today, Volume 58, Issue 10, October 2005.

  These memories and many others that I have of Rod Reid will never fade.

  With warm regards, Rajamani.

• Glen Erickson

• Rod and I have been friends, neighbors, and colleagues since he came to Davis. I will miss him.

  We enjoyed teaching the same students in 104 (Math Methods) and 110 (E & M), and even compared our grades for them (after we had separately completed their exams and our grading) and usually found that our grades were within half a grade point. We sometimes scheduled our arrangement of topics so that we would complement and not duplicate each others presentations and sequencing.

  We did not compare our letters with each other, but found that many of the students that asked one of us for a recommendation for grad school would also ask the other.

  We even shared, decades apart, an enjoyment and deep appreciation of Cornell - Rod as Bethe's grad student, me as a sabbatical visitor using Bethe's office when he was away at Cal Tech.

  As neighbors who had our own dogs and enjoyed the other's dog during visits, we habitually carried treats for the other's dog. He and Virginia were the only other couple who enjoyed watching our vacation slides and asked to see every one.

  As friends within the theorists group, (with Bill True as the closest 3rd man) we sometimes enjoyed the 5th floor table and bench area at noon-time (when I didn't go home for lunch). With Claude Garrod (our office mate after our retirements in 1994) and our families, we annually spent New Year's Eves together. This year, we missed it.

• Najla Ann Al-Doori

• I'm truly sorrowed to hear of Professor Reid's passing. I had the pleasure of taking his quantum mechanics courses as an undergraduate and a graduate student. A dedicated teacher- he often remained at his fifth floor office till the wee hours of the morning helping us (students) with challenging and fascinating homework problems. He will be missed.

  My deepest condolences to his family.

  Najla Ann Al-Doori

• Michael Hayden

• I am sad to hear of the passing of Professor Reid. I had Professor Reid for graduate QM in 1983-84. He was very inspiring to me as a young graduate student. He was so thoroughly prepared for each class and his homework solutions (hand done) were gems. I learned more from his extensive HW sets and side notes in that course than in any other in grad school. He was quite funny too. I'll never forget a few "Reidisms" from our day. He used to say that "37" was the perfect number over and over. He also used to go out of his way to make sure things were correct. One day while I was reading Baym, I noticed some pencil corrections in my book that looked like his handwriting. I approached him on this and he said that he went into my office on the weekend and corrected all the misprints in the book because he knew I was actually reading the book and he wanted it to be correct for me. Wow! He also was a major inspiration to me as a new grad student fresh out of the Navy. It had been 5 years since ugrad for me and I went to get some help one day on a simple matrix problem. While he was explaining what to do, he said, "Are you sure you should be in graduate school?" He wasn't trying to be mean, just reflecting to me how hard I should be working and at what level. It was the single most motivating comment I ever got and really made me get things into gear.

  Michael Hayden
  Professor and Chair
  Department of Physics, UMBC

• Bob Sommer

• i well remember rod as a young, handsome, humorous , bright, friendly and articulate asistant prof back in the early 1970's when i was the department business officer under jim draper and then bill knox.

  bob sommer

• James Vesenka

• Dear Friends:

  "Dr. Reid" was my graduate statistical mechanics instructor back around 1986. I remember his lessons vividly to this day as he tried to do something truly marvelous: To turn statistical mechanics into something more than an exercise in mathematical techniques. He drew all sorts of diagrams attempting to make sense of many complicated mathematical tools. My class consisted of brainiacs and soon-to-be theoreticians so I often felt incapable of success. I was not good at SM, but Dr. Reid never gave up on me. I remember the final grade for the semester in which he commented "B+, but this is a solid B+". I was elated I had passed. Dr. Reid's style, demeanor, and joy for teaching led me to pursue methods of improving my own instruction. I eventually became a convert to physics modeling instruction that I have successfully employed for many years teaching introductory and advanced physics courses. At the heart of modeling instruction is the multi-representational approach that Dr. Reid was such an expert at. He was a role model I am honored to have known.

  Kind regards, Jamie

• Bill Pezzaglia

• My first experience with Rod Reid's dynamic teaching was in the undergraduate 4E course (modern physics) back in 1977. The next year he was excited in being able to teach mathematical physics when Erickson was away. I remember him saying he hoped to be able to teach every course in the department if they would let him because he learned so much himself. As an undergraduate he once surprised me late at night in the washroom, starting the conversation with "why did you divide by 3 on problem 4 on the last exam?". At that moment, I couldn't even remember the problem, as the exam was 2 weeks back.

  As one of the few undergraduates that returned as a graduate student I enjoyed being a teaching assistant with Rod in those very courses I had taken a few years before. That was the year that Star Wars came out. Do people remember that he went and saw it many times and would come up with the most interesting details that he spotted in the corner of the frame of the film? That year someone replaced his department picture with that of a wookie.

  Very late at night as we were confused on one of his creative homework sets (he usually made all the problems up himself, seldom using what is in the book), we'd go to his office, but couldn't tell if he was in or not because he would stuff journals at the bottom of the door, which blocked the light. He wouldn't respond to the first knock. We'd go outside, and have to count over to see if his office light was on, then go back and knock again, and wait, and wait. Eventually he would poke his head out to see if you were still there, and then he would talk to you for an hour. Now he always "claimed" that the journals were there to stop the cold air coming in under the door (even in summer?), and that he was so deep in thought that the knock did not register in his brain until several minutes later.

  In one of my youthful depressions when I was debating about chucking the physics plan and doing something else, we had a very long talk. He told me about working in (I think) a hot dog factory in his youth, and enjoying it for a year as they all talked about cars and the production machinery and such. But the 2nd year, he noticed the conversations were all repeated where he was ready to do the next thing. That was being a physicist, you embrace learning something brand new (even about hot dogs) instead of taking pride in being trained to do one thing over and over. And he talked about taking pleasure in the small tasks. "A car mechanic", he said, "under a car with his arm twisted inside of the machine where he can't see feels some pleasure when finally gets the threads of the bolt to catch. A physicist feels the same thing when he does an expansion of a function and gets a simple answer to his problem when he takes the leading term".

  As a teacher, I find myself emulating much of Reid's style, in particular his enthusiasm. I jump into being able to teach a course I know next to nothing about. I remember Rod's handwritten lecture notes where he excitedly try to derive things from scratch on his own, and give his unique understanding of the phenomena. Here I am at 2am sitting in my office writing up my own notes on figuring out the hydrostatics of a star from scratch rather than looking it up in a book because I want to have the students share the excitement of figuring things out yourself.

  While I'm called "Bill" by everyone, he always called me "William".

  Sincerely,

  "Dr. Bill" Pezzaglia
  CSUEB (Hayward)

• Tom Weideman

• I am truly saddened to hear of Rod's recent passing. I must echo the sentiments of fellow graduate students (particularly Mike Hayden and Jeff Lewis, who both took Rod's 1983-84 graduate quantum mechanics class with me) that Rod was a truly unparalleled instructor in both his acumen and generosity with his time. I remember fondly several of his amusing quirks that others have related (his love of the number 37, his remarkable memory for details, the way he would solicit questions in lecture, etc.), and I'd like to add my own remembrances.

  After he graded an exam, he'd post a (hand-crafted) histogram of the grades. The top grade would have a little arrow pointing toward it with a name at the other end (in our class, that name was usually "Yang"), to give credit to the top performer. For the first exam of his that I took, I made the extremely dubious choice of staying up all night the night before to work on a homework set (unrelated to the exam). I came in the next morning and utterly bombed the test. I was so flustered at my inability to even function during the exam, that I ended up writing Rod a note on the test itself. I don't recall the content of the note, but I do remember it was rife with self-serving nonsense that only a young kid fresh out of undergraduate school, convinced he will be the next Richard Feynman, could come up with. Rod replied with a terse note on my exam that both showed patience with my immature sensibilities and at the same time challenged me to accomplish what I obviously felt I was capable of. I found my test score well below the pack on the histogram, and like the top score, it also merited an arrow. Instead of my name, the arrow was labelled, "special case, presumably", indicating that he assumed that this was not going to happen again.

  In the years that followed, I would run into Rod now and then, in the halls of the physics department, or at the Davis Food Coop. Whenever I did, he would regale me with talk of everything from his trips to Yosemite where he would frequently go for hikes, to chuckling over the essay he remembered reading from my graduate school application a dozen or more years earlier. Then, as suddenly as the conversation started (usually he would blindside me with a comment that was a complete non-sequitor to me, until I eventually figured out what he was talking about), it would end, and he would stride off purposefully. I'll miss his infectious humor and his remarkable insights into physics and the human condition. May the force be with him.

  Tom Weideman

• Michael Vaida

• I found out only yesterday about the death of Dr. Reid. I am deeply saddened.

  Dr. Reid was my Ph.D. thesis adviser in the early nineteen seventies. He was demanding but fair. I owe him much as at one point I almost quit but he straightened me out. My life would have turned out differently if he did not take that kind of personal interest in his graduate students.

  We shared many late, late nights waiting for the CDC printer connected to the Livermore Lab mainframes to spew out reams and reams of paper with the results of our calculation of the electric quadrupole moment of the deuteron. We talked about anything and everything, not only physics. And when he talked about a book or movie it was often with intense passion. No way did you want to miss the movie or not read the book once you listened to Rod's "reviews".

  About a year before his death he ran into a book describing a real life incident in the High Sierras. Remembering a chance encounter of literally a couple of decades ago, when he ran into me as I just returned from a hiking trip from the locales described in the book, he bought me the book and brought it to my house. That's the kind of person Rod was. I will miss him.

  Michael L. Vaida, Ph.D.

• Bob Gallup

• Rod Reid Remembrance

  I was saddened when I heard the news that Rod Reid had passed away. I, like many other UCD physics graduate alumni, was profoundly influenced by Dr. Reid, primarily by being a student in his first-year graduate courses in quantum mechanics (in 1982-1983), and I consider myself to be most fortunate for having had this experience. Dr. Reid’s intelligence, technical expertise, endearing quirkiness, passion, and concern for us as his students impressed me when I was at Davis, and impressed me even more upon reflection as my life has unfolded. In many ways, Dr. Reid has been a role model for me throughout my career in very specific ways.

  When I left Davis in 1993, I started teaching at Southwestern College, a tiny (~600 student) college in south-central Kansas where I have remained to this day. From 1994 until two years ago when we discontinued the physics major due to declining enrollments, I taught a biyearly course in undergraduate quantum mechanics. To say that Dr. Reid influenced both my teaching style and content in this course is an understatement. Until I started teaching this quantum course, I didn’t realize just how much of Dr. Reid’s essence I had taken with me from Davis. When I first started teaching the course, I would often have a recollection of Dr. Reid while I was in class. Because I think that the sharing of background stories with my students adds to the richness of a course, I would generally stop at these moments and say to my class, “This reminds me about the guy who taught me quantum in grad school. Listen to this . . .” By the time I last taught the course two years ago, my lectures and discussions with my students were peppered with references to Dr. Reid. Although I could go on for quite a while with specific examples, there were two that come immediately to mind because not only were they amusing stories, they were also effective as teaching tools.

  My first example of a “Dr. Reid moment” occurred in both my quantum mechanics and my mathematical physics courses whenever we discussed functions that are orthogonal on an infinite-dimensioned space. I would tell my students that this orthogonal was like perpendicular but in more than three dimensions, or a better way to think about it is that there is no overlap among the functions. To help them understand the concept, I would tell them about the time that Dr. Reid was musing about his (and by extension, all physicists) relationship with much of the rest of humanity when he said, “I dunno . . . sometimes I feel . . . orthogonal to other people.” (Even as I type this I can still hear his voice.) Being physics nerds, my students immediately understood the feeling and then had a deeper and visceral appreciation of what orthogonal means in more than three dimensions.

  My second example of a “Dr. Reid moment” occurred when my students would calculate transmission probabilities in quantum tunneling situations. We would do the standard calculation and then apply it to a macroscopic case, like bouncing a tennis ball off of a wall. For the specific parameters that we considered, the transmission probability would end up being something like 10-62. To comment on the size of this number, and to show my students that I’ve had some goofy ideas in my day, I would tell them of the time that I did a similar calculation in Dr. Reid’s class. Upon getting the result, I noted that even though the transmission probability was tiny, wouldn’t it be fun if you were the person who saw the ball actually tunnel through the wall. I recall that Dr. Reid then looked at me with a mixture of disbelief and amusement and said, “Anybody who doesn’t think that that number is actually zero . . . should be in . . . poetry . . . or some such.” Upon a moment’s reflection, though, I think he realized how this statement may have been received and he quickly added that we all have crazy ideas every once in a while (which was similar to the statement that he would make when correcting our mathematical errors, “But what’s a minus sign among friends?”) This episode clearly illustrated for me both Dr. Reid’s desire to have us become competent physicists with a minimum of wacky ideas, and, even more so, his concern and gentleness in dealing with those of us who were still learning. As I mentioned above, Dr. Reid has been a role model for me in my own teaching career, and I’ve consciously attempted to emulate these two aspects of his teaching motivation and style.

  In summary, Dr. Reid was a both a remarkable teacher and a remarkable person who lived his life with an uncommon enthusiasm and passion (as can be attested by anyone who experienced his unmitigated joy in describing his trips to the Coronet Theater in San Francisco to watch the latest installment of Star Wars). I consider myself to be fortunate to have known Dr. Reid and to have learned from him.

  Bob Gallup

• Luke Douforth (Donev)
• I remember Professor Reid's energy and enthusiasm. He was one of the many personable professors at U.C. Davis that made my time in the physics department so enjoyable. He will be missed.
• Mani Tripathi

• Dear Colleagues,

  I am saddened to hear this news. My contact with Rod was in the early days of my tenure at Davis. In the first year of my teaching I was assigned Phy 245B which is a serious course (for an experimentalist) on Standard Model of particle physics. I used to burn the midnight oil almost every night - what made it interesting was that I had Rod for company. I can not count how many middle of the night discussions we had - they were all very illuminating and invigorating. He would drop by, we would make coffee (good stuff before Starbucks emerged) and discuss physics.

  One encounter I remember very vividly was when he dropped by my office once at about 2 AM and posed a question: "Can impedance ever be negative?". I thought immediately that it was an absurd concept but since Rod was asking it, I felt that it deserved a discussion - such was my respect for him! It was an excellent moment of indulging in basic physics.

  Rest in peace, Rod Reid ... you will be missed. Regards,

  Mani

• Lin Corruccini

• Like a number of others, I benefitted from Rod’s help and advice in teaching matters soon after coming to Davis, and continuing over the years. Rod was generous in sharing notes and problems (with solutions!) and perspectives for courses he had taught himself. In teaching undergrad quantum mechanics, for example, he liked to motivate students by presenting a notice he found for “Bob’s School of Quantum Mechanics”, (which the students of course renamed Rod’s School of Quantum Mechanics):

  In addition to riches, the successful quantum mechanic was also promised rewards of a gustatory nature (“Quantum mechanics eat steak!”). The full announcement can be found on the web at: http://www.chemteam.info/Humor/Bob-School-Quantum-Mech.html. Since he had taught Math Methods many times, I also turned to Rod for help with calculations I needed to do in connection with research, and he was always able to offer a suggestion.

  I valued our lunch time conversations in which Rod would recount, usually in great detail, his sojourns to Yosemite, including experiences with rattlesnakes and bears. On one visit, he had packed a can of Beany Weenies for sustenance while hiking, intending to pack out his garbage. But after eating the contents of the can, he observed signs of a bear in the vicinity, and worried that carrying the fragrant can might make him bear bait. So he furtively buried the can. It was typical of Rod that he felt so guilty about littering Yosemite that he made a trip weeks or months later to the same spot, exhumed the now less-fragrant can and packed it out. He enjoyed Death Valley and interestingly, the sights of the Las Vegas strip almost as much. I also found his recommendations for restaurants valuable. He could remember the details of meals eaten months or even years ago, down to the ingredients of seasonings and sauces. He was an enthusiastic opera buff, particularly Verdi and Wagner, mostly viewed from the standing room at the rear of the San Francisco Opera house. Rod was enormously proud of his three children, and spoke often of their accomplishments.

  I will miss his cheerful encouragement when he would stroll past my office as he roamed the halls of the physics department.

• Kai Liu

• Hi, all,

  I feel very much the same. Rod was such a warm and encouraging figure. He also made me feel right at home when I started in 2001, 25 years after Larry.

  I'll add that Rod did make many midnight passes on the second floor as well. I took it for granted since the main office was there before the Geology expansion. Sounds like there were enough night owls in the building to keep him one hour at each floor... I personally benefitted a lot from his advices and enthusiasm on teaching. My students and I also always enjoyed talking to him about our experiments, physics in general, and anything else that came up…

  I'll always rememer his big smiles, passionate voice, and swift steps.

  Kai

• Dan Ferenc
• Rod was my fierce competitor. At midnight, and long-after-midnight, on the 5th floor. We were competing for the most fundamental physicists' night-life support facility - the microwave. He would make his nicely smelling tea, and I, my cheap instant coffee. Somehow, always at the same time! Those liquids would usually get cold by the time we would finish our discussions about just anything, but always something *really important*. What a wonderful competition!
• Rena Zieve

• I inherited the undergraduate math methods class not long after coming to Davis in 1996. Rod had retired but was still teaching upper-level E&M, and he had a lot of useful advice on the math methods material, on how it fit with the students' E&M and mechanics classes, and on more general principles of teaching. Rod and Glenn Erickson were both rightly proud of how well-coordinated the junior-year courses were when they and Bill True taught, since they used their daily lunches in part to find out exactly what everyone was covering. I can only wish that our present classes were synced so well!

  Like many others, I also remember Rod from late nights in the department. Even when I didn't see him, I knew he was around from his ever-present station wagon in the loading dock parking lot.

• Randy Harris

• Rod was my teacher for 215ABC, and later a dear friend. His animation in class and out was charming and infectious. I always smiled when I saw Rod. And as a teacher he had very few peers - a profound inspiration. I'll miss him greatly but cherish his memory always.

  Randy

• Ami Choi

• As a graduate student, I often crossed paths with Rod on the 5th floor of Phy/Geo, and he would always say hello and ask me how my research was coming along. About 4 years ago, he connected me as a physics tutor with the daughter of family friends and showed keen interest in our progress. I will remember him fondly for his enthusiasm towards physics and the well-being of students and also his witty sense of humor.

  Ami

• Andy Albrecht

• When I arrived at UC Davis Rod was generous with his enthusiasm for our nascent cosmology program. He would show up at my office door at random moments with some question or other about cosmology. Those were extremely busy times for me and my normal response to random visitors was to set up a time to meet in the future that was more convenient for me. However, Rod's questions were so interesting and he was so much fun to talk with that I would usually just stop what I was doing and launch right into the conversation. Those were great times, that have left me with very fond memories of Rod.

  Andy

• David and Mary Nisson

• The great poet, Rumi, wrote:
  "In this tangled world, what is there other than the friend?"

  We are sorry for the loss of your friend and colleague, Rod Reid.
  His work lives on, as do your memories of the kindhearted person he was.

  In sympathy,
  Dave and Mary

• Jacob Blickenstaff

• As an undergrad physics major at Davis I took math methods from Dr. Erickson and E&M from Dr. Reid. (It's interesting to hear that they compared notes on the students they shared in those classes.) I have great memories of Dr. Reid's animated lectures: pretending to carry a charge in "from infinity!" when calculating electrical potential is one image I'll never forget. His delight with the movie "Aliens" and his analogy of studying physics with being a member of "the corps" as depicted in the movie was infectious. The SPS chapter made t-shirts with a quote from Dr. Reid my senior year, which is another indication of how beloved he was by majors.

  I now work for the American Physical Society, on projects to encourage more students to become high school physics teachers. I am inspired to do my job to the best of my ability by my memories of Dr. Reid.

  Jacob Clark Blickenstaff
  Teacher Education Programs Manager
  American Physical Society

• Ray Friddle

• Some of my best memories of Physics at UCD were due to Rod Reid. I was lucky enough to have Rod for E&M, which not only made E&M easier to learn, but his mastery over physics and his ability to relate to other areas helped me understand many other courses I had taken! I have many-a-story relating to Rod.

  When you visited Rod Reid with a question, he wouldn’t let you leave until he was sure you got the answer you were looking for. I can remember one instance where he explained some concept that I was struggling with, and with a 100-yard stare on my face I said, “OK, I think I got it”, to which he replied, “No, you don’t.” He then continued to explain the same concept in two more completely different ways, and after each explanation, regardless of what I said, he would look at my facial expression to see if it stuck.

  Another tale I’ve often told is when, in the middle of a very tough E&M exam, a student suddenly stood up from his desk, crumbled his exam, and threw it in the trash before storming out of the classroom. This student was actually a nice guy and always asked good questions, so it was obvious his frustration was with himself. We sat stunned for a moment. Then Prof Reid walked over to the trash can and pulled out the exam, un-crinkled it, and sat down to grade it anyway. It turned out that all of us were doing just as horrible as that student and he ended up receiving a very generous grade.

  Once, Prof Reid was late for his own class. We thought this was just great, and we decided to pretend as if we began class without him. We wrote several equations on the board, such as Maxwell’s Equations, etc., all incorrectly to see if he’d notice. When he eventually showed up, we explained that we were just reviewing in his absence. He apologized and picked up the eraser to prepare for his lecture, and just before swiping the equations off the board he yelled, “Wait a second, what is all this!” We all laughed while he corrected each equation one-by-one.

  Many thanks Rod for all your time, generosity, and making physics entertaining.

  Raymond W. Friddle, Ph.D.
  Technical Staff
  Sandia National Laboratories

• Christie Devlin

• I just got the email about our loss of Dr. Reid--my condolences to his family and to the department. I really enjoyed having him as a teacher during my first graduate year at Davis. I wanted to add a couple of humorous vignettes to the memories of him posted on the website.

  Dr. Reid said a couple of things that I will never forget:

  During a class Dr. Reid was teaching--graduate-level E&M, I think--Dr. Reid was complaining about the profusion of strange symbols for physical concepts. Seemingly out of frustration, he stopped talking, turned to the chalkboard, and drew a very random-looking squiggle. Then he turned back to the class, pointed to the squiggle, and said "This means, laughing, spotted cow!" I'm still laughing about that today.

  In one hallway conversation, Dr. Reid noticed that I was wearing a band-aid on one hand. His comment was, "If you're not wearing a band-aid, your life isn't exciting enough!" To this day, when I put on a band-aid, I often remember that and smile.

• Kailen Neff

• I am truly sorry to hear this. He certainly touched my life as well as the life of many more. Please send my condolences to the family of Dr. Reid.

  Regards, Kailen Neff

• Jeff Lewis

• I took graduate level quantum mechanics from Rod (in '84-'85 I believe). He was a brilliant, enthusiastic teacher. I've emulated many of his mannerisms into my own style, most notably his frequent pauses to ask if we had "any questions...".

  Dr. Jeff Lewis
  Physics Lecturer, CSUB

• Matt Enjalran

• I was truly saddened to learn of the passing of Rod Reid. I send my condolences to his family, friends, and colleagues in the physics department.

  Although I never had Rod as an instructor in graduate school, I always appreciated his enthusiasm for physics, his genuine warm personality, and his interest in students. A memory that particularly stands out is when I was nervously standing in the hallway on the fourth floor waiting for the committee to render their decision on my qualifying exam performance. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Rod down the hall, but I was too preoccupied to look at anyone or thing but the wall in front of me. When the members of the committee emerged and gave me the good news, Rod came over immediately. He had a big smile on his face as shook my hand and said congratulations, well done. His spontaneous, warm response really made me feel good and feel as if I were an important member of the department.

• Charles Hunt

• Rod was my PhD advisor from about 77 to 84.

  Hard to accept that Rod is gone. He was a great teacher, a patient advisor, and a good friend who was always enthusiastic about everything he did. He was the perfect advisor for me as I slowly worked on my dissertation while teaching full time and starting a family. I remember how much effort he put into preparing for each class.

  But I have to share one story. I ranked instructors by the number of pages of notes I took in their class. Rod taught a graduate Statistical Mechanics class and was a consistent 4 pager. But one day, as class began, I discovered that I only had one sheet of paper. OK, I can write on both sides and write small and it will be fine. And it was. Halfway through the class and Rod is going slower than usual. I haven’t even filled up side 1. 15 minutes left and I’m only a third of the way through side 2. And Rod looks up at the clock and notices that the period is almost over. Suddenly the chalk is clicking across the chalkboard at an awesome rate. I filled up page 2. I filled up the margins. I filled up every square centimeter. Finally the clicking stopped. From behind me somebody said “My pencil is on fire.” At the end of the year Physics party, somebody from the class gave Rod a large piece of chalk with copper tubing wrapped around it as cooling coils for when he went into overdrive at the board.

  I haven’t seen Rod in years, but it still hurts that he is gone.

  Charles Hunt
  Physics Instructor, retired
  American River College

• Peter Rambo

• Professor Reid was undoubtedly one of my favorite professors, and I have vivid memories of his enthusiastic lectures. He taught me everything I know about Quantum Mechanics, as I took both undergraduate and graduate courses from him. You were late for class at you own peril, as usually Dr. Reid would busily fill all the blackboards before class started so he could hit his lecture "running". One morning we must have looked particularly bewildered, prompting Dr. Reid to exclaim that we weren't just under water, "but didn't even know which way was up." But with his lopsided smile, somehow it was OK - and sure enough he quickly put it right so we could understand.

  I am proud to be a graduate of "Rod's School of Quantum Mechanics", a spoof on correspondence schools shared between professor and students ("... now I make the big bucks and eat steak," was the enthusiastic endorsement - see the photo of the shirt that we all donned for our final exam).

  Peter Rambo
  Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

• Tom Gutierrez

• I was a student in Rod's graduate E&M course circa 1994. He was a great teacher and mentor; his influences stay with me to this day in my work as an educator. He always had these wonderful, vivid analogies to augment his lectures. I remember "the ant physicist" (whenever he wanted to give a sense of local scale), "Mrs. Lockhart's class" (whenever he wanted to gently remind us that we should have known something since Kindergarden), and the famous "no-name quizzes" (a quick, anonymous in-class diagnostic that still terrified me for some reason). I remember asking him questions in office hours and having them followed by a long, awkward pause accompanied by a blank thousand-yard stare -- then a sudden burst of outrageous, animated response full of physic-y goodness. He had this knack of never really ending any conversation. Sometimes a week would go by and he would be suddenly start talking with me intently like no time had passed between sentences. Later, in more advanced courses, we encountered the Reid potential, reminding us students of his early contributions to nuclear theory.

  He made a powerful impact on generations of his students; he will be missed.

  Thomas D. Gutierrez
  Associate Professor
  Physics Department
  California Polytechnic State University
  San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
  805-756-2455
  http://www.tdgutierrez.com

Have a memory to share? Please email it to scalettar@physics.ucdavis.edu for posting!