John Wilkins

John W. Wilkins, Ohio Eminent Scholar and Professor of Physics Emeritus at The Ohio State University, passed away on 6 December 2019 in Columbus, Ohio.

Born on 11 March 1936 in Des Moines, Iowa, John obtained a BS in engineering at Northwestern University in 1959 and a PhD in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1963. John was a student of J. Robert Schrieffer.

After an NSF postdoc at Cambridge University, John was appointed assistant professor at Cornell University in 1964. He left Cornell as professor of physics in 1988 to become an Ohio Eminent Scholar and professor of physics at Ohio State.

In his 53-year career in many areas of condensed-matter theory and interdisciplinary research, John had 45 PhD students, 59 postdocs, and 12 faculty visitors, and he published more than 300 papers. John was well known for his straightforward and direct approach, scientific curiosity, and humor.

We met John and each other 50 years ago, when John was a young faculty member at Cornell, and we were students and postdocs. John was excited about physics, and this was contagious. He encouraged the theorists to work with experimentalists and assist them in understanding and communicating their measurements. He also suggested new experiments that could test theories. He helped all of us—scientifically, professionally, and personally.

When recently asked what his most significant accomplishment in physics was, John responded, “My students and postdocs"—men and women of many backgrounds and ethnicities.

At the physics colloquium, John often had to interrupt the invited speaker and ask them to please explain simply the goal of their research and why it was important. This rescued many colloquium speakers who had quickly jumped into the minute details of their research and would have put the entire audience to sleep. This was an important communications lesson for all of us.

As examples of his broad range of interests at Cornell, John worked with the low-temperature experimental groups of Lee, Reppy, and Richardson; with the high energy x-ray synchrotron source; and with Ken Wilson and his students to extend the Renormalization Group to solve the Anderson impurity problem.

As an Ohio Eminent Scholar, John worked with Ohio State leadership to enhance investment in research, presided over the growth of the condensed matter group, and built strong ties between physics and other departments. He paved the way for the Center for Emergent Materials, an NSF Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, helped move the Ohio State library into the digital age, supported growth of the Ohio Supercomputer Center, and played a pivotal role in recruiting several senior hires, including Wilson.

John was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a fellow of the American Physical Society (APS), American Association for the Advancement of Science, Sloan and Guggenheim foundations, and Los Alamos National Laboratory. He chaired the APS Division of Condensed Matter Physics and received a lifetime award as an APS Outstanding Referee. He served as editor on several journals. He was a visitor and adviser to the US Department of Energy, national and company laboratories, and universities in the US and Europe. His service in these roles was invariably tireless, highly perceptive, and singularly effective, to the enduring benefit of the worldwide physics community.

In addition, John made a long-term commitment to the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics to establish a solid-state program. John made many extended visits to the Bohr and Oersted institutes in Copenhagen and Chalmers University in Gothenburg, Sweden. There were numerous exchanges of professors, postdocs, and students from Denmark, Sweden, and Finland. John was the ideal catalyst to energize the various Nordic solid-state groups and encourage them to interact. His broad view of physics, combined with his boundless energy, made him an extremely valuable member of the Nordic community.

On his sabbatical to Denmark and Sweden in 1972–73, John took three graduate students. John helped organize Nobel Symposium 24 in Sweden, which was attended by nine previous and future Nobel Prize winners. We students were allowed to attend this premier event as drivers and slide projectionists; we got to hear the talks and go to the banquet. This was an unforgettable experience.

John left substantial bequests to both Cornell and Ohio State. At Cornell there will be two endowed John W. Wilkins postdoctoral fellowships in condensed-matter physics—one theoretical and one experimental. At Ohio State there will be a John W. Wilkins endowed professorship.