Obituary of Roy Goodrich (1938-2004)

Roy Gordon Goodrich, Professor Emeritus of physics at Louisiana State University, died October 11, 2012 at his home in Washington D.C., after an extended battle with cancer. Born September 17, 1938 in Dallas, Texas, he was raised in Shreveport, Louisiana. Roy obtained his B.S. degree in 1960 from the Louisiana Polytechnic Institute in Ruston, Louisiana, and his M.A. in 1963 and Ph.D. in 1965 from the University of California at Riverside, California. In 1965 he took a position of Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Louisiana State University (LSU) in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where he rose through the academic ranks through Professor to Ball Family Professor before his retirement in 2007. Roy was a Fellow of the American Physical Society, a member of the Materials Research Society, Sigma Pi Sigma, and Sigma Xi. In addition to more than 80 refereed journal publications, he generated two patents, one being the first ever for LSU. He was an expert in the use of the de Haas-van Alphen and Shubnikov-de Hass effects to determine the Fermi surface structure of novel compounds. After retiring from LSU, Roy moved to Washington D.C. to become a Rotating Program Manager at the National Science Foundation. Roy’s tenure at LSU began in 1965, just before a big expansion of the department following a multi-year Science Development Award from the National Science Foundation. During the period between 1966-67 seven new faculty were hired. Although Roy was essentially the same age as most of them, he became their ad hoc mentor, advisor, and friend because of his knowledge of the department, college, and university. He was a quick study who possessed the fine qualities of a leader. Roy was elected Chairman of the Department of Physics and Astronomy in 1973 at a ripe-old age of 35. Not only was he one of the youngest department chairs at LSU, he was one of the youngest among most university physics departments. He served a distinguished term as chairman, during which the department grew in faculty numbers, research grants, and reputation. In the latter part of his career Roy focused most of his experimental efforts at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, FL. There he led the effort to map out the Fermi surface of the 1-1-5 heavy fermion systems and a number of different hexaborides. Indeed, this phase of his career produced some of the highest profile work and certainly was one of his most productive periods. Because Fermi surface topology studies had fallen out of favor, Roy was one of the few low temperature physicists left that had a good command of the macroscopic quantum interference techniques needed for these studies. Roy proved to be a hard working and cooperative collaborator, making many friends in the profession, while impacting the lives of Louisiana’s youth through teaching graduate and undergraduate physics courses for 43 years. He will be missed by many.

Philip W. Adams

David P. Young

Edward Zganjar

LSU Baton Rouge