Roger D. Kirby

Roger D. Kirby, a highly regarded physicist and professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), passed away on 31 January 2020, at the age of 77.

Roger was born on 1 June 1942 in Lansing, Michigan. He was the first in his extended family to earn a high school diploma. He discovered his passion for physics at age 15 and had NSF summer research fellowships all through his undergraduate days. He received his undergraduate degree in physics from Michigan State University. This was followed in 1969 by a PhD in physics from Cornell University, with a thesis titled, “Far-infrared absorption by off-center impurities in alkali halides.” This work described the first Fourier transform spectroscopic study of this new class of paraelectric defects.

Roger’s enthusiasm for physics and his research was very evident to his fellow graduate students and others in the group, and it led to several papers published with his supervisor and colleagues. Along the way he also discovered and presented in a solo Physical Review Letters paper a very complex submillimeter-wave spectrum associated with a simple lattice defect. This work has been verified many times, and to this day, 50 years later, it remains a theoretical mystery. Following his PhD, Roger completed a postdoc at University of Illinois, studying a variety of defect systems with Raman scattering techniques.

Roger joined the physics department at UNL in 1971. With his training at Cornell and Illinois, Roger had become one of the leaders studying the vibrational properties of solids for fundamental physics and applications in the far-IR region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Roger built his laboratory doing significant research in that area and mentored about half of his PhD students.

In the second half of his career, Roger’s research focused on understanding magnetism in nanoscale and nanostructured materials. His group developed innovative techniques for fabricating and studying thin films, multilayer films, and laterally patterned films by direct interference laser annealing, a very versatile method of varying materials properties without modifying surface topography. This technique can be used to form nanoscale arrays of dots and/or antidots in thin magnetic films. This led to the observation of a magnetic anisotropy lattice in which magnetic dots of in-plane magnetic anisotropy are formed in a background of perpendicular magnetic anisotropy. His group developed several optical systems for studying magneto-optical properties of thin film and bulk samples over a wide range of wavelengths and temperatures. Finally, his group developed a “pump-probe” magneto-optical system based on a femtosecond laser, which permits the observation of magnetization precession and damping in thin films in a variety of experimental configurations. This system can provide a detailed understanding of magnetic coupling between nanoelements in thin films, multilayers, and laterally structured materials. The second half of his graduate students received their PhD degrees working in these research areas.

Roger was a beloved teacher and mentor who received numerous awards for his teaching and leadership. He was very proud of the fact that he mentored the first woman in modern times to receive a physics PhD from UNL. In addition, he helped her set up her first lab at a California university where she later became chair of the physics department. He won the Distinguished Teaching Award, the Recognition Award for Contributions to Students, and an award for his leadership in strengthening research at UNL. He also dedicated significant time over the years to community outreach, including acting as one of the leaders for the Saturday Science Program, an annual event currently funded by the University Foundation that is designed to stoke elementary students’ interest in science while introducing them to the possible research careers and UNL’s campus.

As chair of the department of physics and astronomy from 1995 until 2007, Roger played a crucial role in securing funding for the new physics building at UNL. He supervised the construction process from planning through the final move in. He had a love of music from classical to jazz and remained a keen tennis player, through thick and thin, right up to his final years.

Roger was a longtime member of the American Physical Society and the American Association of Physics Teachers. He contributed greatly to the field of condensed-matter physics during his illustrious career, and he leaves behind a legacy of groundbreaking research and dedicated mentorship. His contributions to the university, the field of physics, and the lives of his students and colleagues will be remembered for years to come.

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