Obituary of James Basil Gerhart

James B. Gerhart, a member of the Physics Department at the University of Washington since 1956, died on February 24, 2007 at the age of 78. He was especially known for his teaching interests and his contributions to the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) and the Pacific Northwest Association for College Physics (PNACP).

Born and raised in Pasadena, Jim went to the California Institute of Technology for his undergraduate education. He continued with graduate work at Princeton, where he received the PhD degree in 1955. After a year of postdoctoral research as an Instructor at Princeton, he moved to the University of Washington where he joined the experimental nuclear physics group.

Both at Princeton and at Washington, the main thrust of Jim’s research was studies of nuclear beta decay. In one major program, Jim and collaborators measured the longitudinal polarization of positrons emitted in the decay of ¹⁴O, an experiment made more difficult by the short half-life of ¹⁴O (71 sec). The polarization was determined by a study of asymmetries in electron-positron scattering. The final result, published in 1961, was found to be in good agreement with the predictions of the two-component neutrino theory that had been promulgated a few years earlier.

The emphasis in Jim’s work later shifted to teaching. He departed from the standard lecture format in introductory courses and also developed an innovative course for students who found physics of cultural interest. He was known as an outstanding teacher and received exceptional kudos from students. In 1981, he received the Distinguished Teaching Award from the University of Washington.

In the mid-1960s, Jim began to play a major role in the national and regional physics-teaching community. He was active in the American Institute of Physics and was on its governing board from 1973 to 1977. He also was a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. After earlier serving as a Section Representative to the AAPT, Jim became AAPT Secretary in 1971 and continued until 1977 when he was elected vice-president of the AAPT, followed by three more years in the AAPT’s presidential chain of president-elect, president, and past-president. The AAPT awarded him its Millikan Medal in 1985 for his “notable and creative contributions to the teaching of physics.”

A major part of Jim’s professional effort was devoted to fostering the PNACP. The PNACP was founded in 1965, in response to a National Science Foundation initiative that sought to establish regional associations of colleges and universities for cooperation in physics teaching and research. Jim was a founding organizer of the PNACP, chairman of its Board of Directors from 1970 to 1972, and its Executive Officer from 1970 to 1994. The organization now includes 35 dues-paying colleges and universities in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Alaska. The PNACP has been continuously active since its founding and its success has been attributed to Jim’s leadership. In 1996, the PNACP established the James B. Gerhart Lecture. The citation characterized his leadership style by saying “Jim’s soft voice and iron will dominated the first 30 years of the history of PNACP.”

Jim had many interests outside of physics. He read extensively and belonged to an array of organizations as varied as the Enological Society of the Northwest and the Seattle Urban League. Although he deplored the “cookbook” approach to teaching, in his personal life he became a fine and serious cook, even to the point of writing his own cookbook, Eating at Home. With this skill and his welcoming manner, Jim was a consummate host. In later years, he became an avid traveler, together with his wife, Genevra.

Jim had a fascination with numbers. In his acceptance speech for the AAPT Millikan Award, he spoke about their importance in physics and in the teaching of physics. He offered his solutions to the challenges involved in teaching a large number of topics to large numbers of students in many different classes with many different instructors. Numbers also mattered to Jim in ways that went beyond his life as a physicist and teacher. For example, he kept detailed records of the numbers of new flowers that he saw on his daily walks to the University. Plots of the data produced a graph that dramatically showed Seattle’s seasonal variations.

Jim was a person with an intense interest in physics teaching, strong opinions on how best to do it, and a devotion to the national physics institutions that helped efforts to improve teaching. He leaves us with memories of a valued colleague and friend, who will be greatly missed.