Obituary of Joseph Roger Priest

Joseph R. Priest, Emeritus Professor of Physics at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, passed away on 25 September 2009. Born 14 October 1929, he earned his bachelor’s degree in physics and mathematics from Wilmington College in 1951. He served his country in the Army during the Korean War, then earned his master’s degree in physics from Miami University in 1956. He earned his PhD with Donald Tendam at Purdue University in 1960, studying angular distributions of protons and deuterons from reactions utilizing alpha and He-3 beams. After working for IBM in Poughkeepsie New York studying stress in thin films, Joe joined the Miami Physics faculty in 1962. He was promoted to Professor in 1968, and altogether spent 45 years as a faculty member at Miami.

At Miami, Joe’s early research program involved collaborations utilizing proton, deuteron, and alpha beams incident on selected targets at the cyclotron of the NASA Lewis Research Center in Cleveland Ohio. He also collaborated on studies of reactions utilizing the 600-MeV proton beam of the NASA Space Radiation Effects Laboratory synchrocyclotron at Newport News Virginia. A series of Joe’s students earned Miami physics master’s degrees in investigations based on this research. Later Joe directed students earning the master’s degree in Miami’s Institute of Environmental Science.

Joe’s interests in instrumentation and electronics led to his developing software and experiments for use with personal computers in the sophomore laboratory course. In 1989 Joe collaborated with John Snider to publish Electronics for Physics Experiments: using the Apple IIe computer, and in 1990 they received the Higher Education Software Award for Distinguished Curriculum Implementation from the National Center for Research to Improve Postsecondary Teaching and Learning (NCRIPTAL). In summer 1989 Joe was invited as visiting professor to Osmania University, Hyderabad, India to assist in establishing computer-based instruction there.

In addition, Joe published University Physics with George Arkfen, David Griffing and Don Kelly, as well as a long string of articles on teaching, often in collaboration with his students or with James Poth. Joe’s interest in environmental physics was manifest in his publication of Problems of Our Physical Environment in 1973, regularly updated and now in use in its sixth edition re-titled as Energy: Principles, Problems, Alternatives.

Joe was heavily committed to and involved in restructuring the beginning course sequence, the Miami University Physics Education Project, generously supported by NSF grants and gaining national recognition by Project Kaleidoscope as one of the Programs that Work.

In 1987 Joe was one of the first two to receive the Distinguished Educator Award from Miami’s College of Arts and Science, and beginning in 1991 he was named Miami University Distinguished Professor. In 1990 Joe was presented the Alumni Educator award from Wilmington College. In 1993, he became the first science professor to teach at Miami’s campus in Luxembourg, and in 1994 Joe was awarded Miami’s highest honor, the Benjamin Harrison Medallion.

Loved by his students, Joe was also a devoted husband, father, and grandfather. He and Mary Jean enjoyed fifty years of marriage, and they were very active in the Oxford and Miami communities as well as St. Mary’s Church and Catholic Campus Ministry, where they served as mentors and role models to friends, peers, students and young couples. Joe had a great love for the outdoors, in particular gardening, biking, traveling and the ocean. He viewed as one of his greatest accomplishments the construction of his family’s home on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, which he built himself with the help of many friends.

A passionate and energetic educator who cared deeply about his students, long after his formal retirement Joe continued to develop new experiments and to teach electronics instrumentation.

A fitting description of Joe’s career is that of Chaucer’s Clerk of Oxenford: “Gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche.”