Jack G. Dodd, Jr.

Jack G. Dodd, Charles A. Dana Professor of Physics Emeritus, Colgate University, died on April 23rd in Johnson City, NY at the age of 89. Jack joined Colgate’s Department of Physics and Astronomy in 1971 and helped the University promote faculty research and raise its profile in the sciences. During his years at Colgate, he served as Director of the Division of Natural Sciences and Mathematics (1975-77) and chaired the Department (1980-82). He retired in 1988.

Jack was born and raised in Spokane, WA and served as an Electronics Technician in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He liked to tell how during his military training, he had to repair live electronic apparatus while standing in water, enduring electric shocks to simulate battle conditions. After the war, Jack did his undergraduate work at the Illinois Institute of Technology and met his future wife Mary Ann while on a 3-day train trip from Chicago to Spokane. Because they were the only two in the dining car, the steward offered to seat them together. They agreed, their friendship blossomed, and the couple were married two years later (1951). After graduation from IIT, Jack worked at Argonne National Laboratory (1951-53), but growing restless with their daily lifestyle, he and Mary Ann moved to Fourche Valley, Arkansas to teach in the single K-12 school that served that isolated, impoverished community. The couple often spoke of this period (1953-57) as one of the most satisfying and rewarding of their lives. Jack’s love of physics led him to graduate school, and he completed his Ph.D. at the University of Arkansas in 1965. Prior to his arrival at Colgate, he held faculty positions at Arkansas Tech University and the University of Tennessee.

Jack’s breadth of scientific expertise was extraordinary: it spanned optics; microscopy; spectroscopy; shock wave and detonation theory; plus numerical simulations in fluid mechanics and deformation of solids. He consulted for McCrone Research Associates in Chicago (famous for solving the Shroud of Turin controversy) for over 40 years, contributing numerous papers to the international journal The Microscope. Concurrently, he performed classified research for the Defense Systems Division of Honeywell, Inc. in Minneapolis. With colleague Dr. Linda DeNoyer, he founded Spectrum Square Associates, a firm specializing in advanced software for spectroscopy. The company did business from 1985-2015, and the pair published an overview of their work in the Handbook of Vibrational Spectroscopy in 2006. He also collaborated with Carlos Stroud and Robert Boyd at the University of Rochester.

Jack’s wife Mary Ann died in 2007. She was an accomplished organist and was Colgate’s University Organist and Instructor in Music for twenty years. Jack enthusiastically supported her career and provided technical expertise as her tuner. He also helped design the organ the couple installed in their home.

Jack is survived by a son, Jeffrey Dodd and his wife Ruslana Sistryak of Jacksonville AL, a daughter, Laura Evans and her husband Kleber Santos of Hartsdale NY, and three grandchildren.

Jack brought to Colgate a taste for technology and an engineering esthetic that he combined with an imaginative and insightful understanding of physics. A gifted experimentalist, he designed and constructed a small particle accelerator to study atomic physics in his Colgate lab. He enjoyed designing and building clever instrumentation, and his colleagues could always count on him for novel solutions to their own instrumental difficulties. He was easy to work with, and his imagination and taste for physics never flagged.

Photo Credit: Colgate University