Class of 1970

Bill Egbert

Email: wcegbert@mmm.com

I am still at 3M, still in product development. Our group is working on a couple of new applications for so-called Smart Labels (radio frequency identification, aka RFID). My role is to design the tags that are at the heart of the Smart Label, considering both electromagnetic performance and manufacturability. The electromagnetic design work has taken an unusual turn, leading our department's computational engineering group–our equivalent to "theorists"—to take an interest in the problem. It may not be string theory, but it is interesting to be at a point where experiments are leading and shaping theory in this little off-shoot from Maxwell's equations. Design for manufacturability and product lifetime is a proving to be a continually difficult problem. There are a few ways to make these tags and many ways to destroy them. Our group is making technical progress, but the remaining challenge is how to make tough little electronic devices for a price that customers are willing to pay. My work continues to be an interesting blend of physics, electrical engineering, chemistry, and materials science.

Class of 1971

Larry Alquist

Email: lalquist@emh.org

Happy Holidays to All! The first of our 3 kids left the nest this fall. After considerable agonizing, Greta decided to attend Macalester rather than Carleton. The Twin Cities seems to suit her well thus far! Erik is a senior at Bangor High this year, so we'll go through the same process once again. He has his heart set on a small liberal-arts Minnesota college. He continues his passion for debate (a New England rep to the nationals in Atlanta) and literally got off the couch to train for cross-country this fall. Ah, the blessing of youth to manage that physical shock without a trip to a cardiac unit.

The PROFILE and FAFSA process has been fascinating and perplexing to Patti and me. So much so that we took a Caribbean break last spring. With a second nearly in the college pipeline, that may be the final pleasure trip for some time.

I continue work as a medical physicist at the local hospital. Recent years have brought a substantial pay increase for those in this profession. There is currently a significant shortage. Young grads may wish to take a look at post-grad studies.

Class of 1972

Ken Bowen

I am in my 8th year teaching stagecraft, CAD, and designing shows at latin School of Chicago. This year includes “The Laramie Project,” “The Rememberer” based on Haida Indian stories, “Actors Nightmare”, and “Quick Study:” 30 plays in 60 minutes. Past photos at http://www.latinschool.org/studentlife/perform_arts/. I am looking forward to Latin’s mid-winter intensive “Project Week” where I will again lead 10 students in robotic programming. Last winter an 11th grader in this project programmed his robot to drive to the middle of a room, execute a 360 looking at lighting intensities and then drive to the area of highest d intensity/d angle. It moved at a speed proportional to how “interesting” the intensity field was compared to what it had in memory. Of course, other kids just programmed smasher robots but that’s high school in a nutshell. Pics and video can be found at this site: http://www.latinschool.org/academics/projectweek/projectweek2003/robots/

Class of 1973

Mike Lauterbach

Email: michael.lauterbach@lecroy.com

Margaret and I have moved to lovely Hamden, CT where our new house sits on top of a hill. A great view of the fall leaves as I write this note. We are now much closer to Yale where Margaret is Associate Dean for Research in the Nursing School. I continue working at LeCroy Corporation and spend about half of my time traveling—teaching electronic design engineers how to test PCI Express, Serial ATA, and lots of other interesting stuff.

Mark R Williams

Email: Mark.Williams@shell.com

URL: http://www.shell.com

Phone: +44 207 289 4994

Address: 8 Squire Gardens, London NW8 8QH United Kingdom

Candace, daughter Megan, and I are into our third year in London, while son David is a sophomore at Carleton. I very much enjoy the challenge of my work, which involves responsibility for businesses operating in over a hundred countries—a bit like dealing with the UN!

Candace and Megan are having far too much fun here in London. Meg is a freshman at the American School in London and is able to travel all over Europe with her volleyball team or on school outings. As for Candace, everyone's fondest hope should be to be reincarnated as an expatriate spouse in London. With the numerous expat spouse organizations, barely a day goes by that she doesn't have some sort of trip or outing scheduled. She's doing a much better job of enjoying London and Britain that I am.

David is taking some physics at Carleton and very much enjoys the teaching. He finds it a bit weird to run across the occasional artifact from Candace's and my time at Carleton—the odd gray-haired professor who knew us back then, an old Algol, the mysterious pictures that recently appeared around campus of his mom at 19 in a bikini, etc. I trust all of you on the faculty will not share any of the real dirt that might be in some of the files. Best regards, Mark & Candace Williams

Class of 1974

Ted Dunham

Much has happened since I last wrote to the newsletter. Our instrument for SOFIA (HIPO) is nearing completion. It saw the sky for the first time in October through our 1.8-m telescope. HIPO will eventually be used to observe occultations with SOFIA, but first it will be used for the initial shakedown and test program for the facility. We expect to introduce HIPO to the airplane in Waco for the first time this coming spring. This will culminate in the first ground-based check of the SOFIA telescope on a star. In the meantime development of the Kepler mission is proceeding apace with CCD manufacturing entering the production phase. At Lowell, we have just announced our partnership with Discovery Communications (yes, the Discovery Channel people) for developing and operating a 4-meter telescope with a 2-degree field prime focus camera and traditional Cassegrain instrument complement. This project is in its early development stage at the moment with the primary mirror blank under fabrication at Corning and major subsystems being studied at contractors' facilities.

Jeannie has settled in as the librarian/media specialist at Flagstaff High School and has discovered that the position is more than half-time computer system administration. The previous librarians were more interested in technological advancements, so the print collection is woefully old. This will be a high priority to fix. Elizabeth is in her second year in grad school in history at U. Tennessee, where everything is in shades of orange and white this time of year. Sarah is a student in geology at Colby and will be returning shortly from a semester abroad in New Zealand. Russell went to writing "boot camp" at Carleton last summer, giving us an excuse to stop by the department office for a few minutes visit with Bruce Thomas, Bill Titus, and Cindy Blaha.

Dayton Jones

This has been a good year for us. I'm supervising the Astronomical Measurements Group at JPL, a great group of astronomers. This mainly involves a constant search for research funding. Sound like a familiar activity to any of you? When actually doing something productive, I help the Deep Space Network design arrays of several hundred small radio telescopes for spacecraft tracking, and when nobody's looking, I try to do the same for radio astronomy's next generation instrument—the Square Kilometer Array. I'm learning a lot of new things along the way, which is always fun. Our two daughters continue to make us very happy. We plan to attend the Carleton reunion this summer. Best wishes to all of you. Cheers,

Bob Nelson

Hi all, last year I procrastinated until it was too late so I am writing early this year. We are doing fine and enjoying our new townhouse. I don't miss the yard work and snow removal at all. Our daughter Rebecca is still at home so we aren't quite empty nesters yet. I am still working at Cisco in Maple Grove, MN. Like everyone else, we're hoping for businesses to open their purse strings and start buying our product. We build a SCSI storage product that allows servers to access their storage over gigabit Ethernet. Hopefully, next year will be more active. Look forward to hearing from everyone.

Larry Sparks, Patti Dresel Sparks (’75)

Email: sparks@jpl.nasa.gov

On the professional front, the big news is that one of Patti's students, Nate Stern, won the Apker Award for work he did with her, Jim Eckert (HMC professor) and Matt Carey (IBM—now Hitachi) on magnetic structures. We are all very proud of him and pleased that some of our last Apker Award winner's money was spent on funding Nate's projects and trips to international conventions. During her 15 years at Mudd, Patti has had one winner and one finalist, for about 5% of the total awardees. It is fun to work at Mudd!

On the family front, Kathryne is a first year student at Grinnell and informs us that they make fun of Carls there. Great! Mark Schneider (Physics ‘76) was extremely influential in helping her decide to go there. Thanks! She loves it. Athena (age 15) is active in volleyball and basketball and occasionally in academics. She is almost 6' tall and gets asked if she is a model. That was never a problem for Patti. Larry is enjoying work at JPL now more than at anytime since he started. He is working on problems related to using the GPS system for airline navigation. Most of his leisure time is taken up coaching basketball in the local community league (i.e., the high school farm system), senior girls division (ages 11-13). His team won the championship last March, and he has been working with a new team for the last month. Nearly all the girls that he has coached, who have later tried out for the high school team, have made it. This isn't a talent he expected to exercise 20 years ago. Our sad news is that Sparks' stepfather passed away in August, and the resulting disruption for his mother has been severe. We wish everyone a very happy holiday season.

Class of 1975

Tim Brunner

Email: brunner@snet.net

Hello, another interesting year. Thanks to human being's logarithmic perception of time, the apparent time from last year's note seems to have been just a few months. Our family is beginning to go into late, mature stages. We only have Lydia at home now, with the others away at school. She is totally "star-struck"—but by the stars of Broadway not those beyond the solar system—and is loving her singing and dancing classes. Theo has gone off to UC Santa Barbara, where he hopes to make the volleyball team. Maxwell is finishing off his senior year at Dartmouth, and Emily is starting med school at Michigan. I continue to work at building ever-finer lines on IBM chips, and also finding a little time for biking, volleyball and ultimate frisbee. Sally is doing fine. Regards to all my friends from Carleton!

Mark Jaeger

Dear friends, not much has changed—same house, same family, and same job. I am now working for Oracle, fixing bugs in the database. It’s a lot like what doctors do: running tests, ruling out vague diagnosis, and finding the right medicine to make things all better. One child is almost done with college, the other is about to start next year, so we’ll be empty nesters. But I’ll have to keep working to pay tuition. If you’re in Chicago, feel free to stop by. Greetings to Tim, Sally, Sparks.

Kathy Krafft

Email: kkrafft@sciencenter.org

Phone: (607) 273-0675

Address: 10 Snyder Hill Court, Ithaca, NY 14850

Greetings from Ithaca! I've been to Northfield twice this fall. The first trip was to take my middle daughter, Caroline, to start her freshman year at Carleton!! I took her to visit in April 2002; at the end of the day she said "I’ve found my people," and indeed she applied early decision (after visiting other colleges too). She's VERY happy with her new friends, activities, and excellent classes/professors; she particularly likes the sense of humor and silliness at Carleton. She's doing really well there. She's continuing on with advanced Latin classes, and has started Greek. She expects to double-major in Classics and some yet-to-be-determined second major. The second trip was for our annual Association of Science and Technology Centers conference, which conveniently was in St. Paul early this November; thus I got to see Caroline and take a group of her friends out to dinner. Youngest daughter, Jennifer, is a sophomore in high school and doing well. Oldest daughter, Victoria, is a junior computer science major at Harvey Mudd College; she occasionally stops by to say hi to Patti Sparks! She too is very pleased with her college decision, and working very hard; she'll be thinking about jobs or grad school soon.

This past year has been, rather literally, insane from a work perspective: we've opened our newly-tripled museum space to great acclaim from our visitors, and finished three major traveling exhibitions. These traveling exhibitions are huge projects, requiring lots of documentation and spare parts as well as finishing up each exhibit, along with a technical manual describing how to set up two truckloads of components! But we're acquiring a real quality reputation in the field for well-crafted exhibitions. 1. Tech City, a 3,000sqft exhibition on engineering (www.techcityexhibition.org), shipped out in January; it is currently in Boca Raton, Florida. 2. Cool Moves: the Artistry of Motion (website under development at http://www.montshire.org/teams/hear_here/) in June, and the two copies are currently in Bettendorf, Iowa and Hickory, North Carolina. 3. NanoWorld (www.itsananoworld.org) is heading out the door in three weeks. The last is a large project, 3,000sqft, and really exciting exhibition on cells and the amazing things inside your body that are too small to see!! Nano is being retrofitted to meet National Electrical Code and Underwriter's Laboratory certified (UL)-what a lot of details, but then it will be off to a major attraction in sunny Florida for the winter (still confidential until it gets there, but you can guess or contact me if you're heading near there).

I'm so grateful for how well my three girls have grown up and taken advantage of great opportunities. We did take a glorious vacation this August and explore western Washington State—from Mt. St. Helens to the ocean, rainforest and whale watching. This next year should be quieter, thank goodness, although I expect my involvement in our local school district will increase as we work for better funding for public education. All the best to everyone.

Class of 1976

George J. Jelatis

Greetings from Duluth! This summer my wife and I had our first anniversary celebrating our move to Duluth. We very much enjoy the quiet, walking along Lake Superior, and trips up the North Shore. The year went quickly for us, between her settling in at work and also studying for her cytopathology certification wallpaper, and my working on a large project to create online training materials for a document management system used by a pharmaceuticals company here in MN. That project finished in October and, with no other projects in sight, my employer of the last 7.5 years eliminated my position.

The substantial, immediate benefit is that I no longer have to clean out my Inbox. I believe that other benefits will soon become visible, now that I am past the event horizon.

I'm now in my second year as an assistant class agent, contacting some of the 76-ers via phone and Email. The best part, for me, is reconnecting to people that in some cases I had known nothing about for many years, but that I knew while at Carleton. Their recognition of the special nature of the place, students, faculty, and the time spent resonates with my own similar thoughts and feelings. I encourage you to give, even a little, if you can, since participation percentage is the most important single factor in getting funding from external sources to help the College. Happy Holidays!

Marilyn Ruth Johnson

Wow! Some things have really changed in my life: As I compose this, I'm sitting here watching my son at his karate lesson, I'm a student in Soil Science, and I'm not employed for money. Some things are still the same: We're still active Quakers (despite providing karate lessons for Andrew), Dave still works as a librarian, doing reference and computer system support. We still like living in densely populated South Minneapolis, and escaping to 'our' CSA farm or the MN state parks occasionally. Good health to all!

Thomas Moore

Email: tmoore@pomona.edu

URL: www.physics.pomona.edu/sixideas/

Phone: (909) 621-8726 (work)

Address: 2428 San Fernando Ct, Claremont, CA 91711

While we are struggling to bear our embarrassment about our new governor (and in spite of narrowly escaping losing our home to one of the Southern California wildfires: the flames came within 100 meters!), things are going well for us. Joyce is working as an interim pastor at the Mentone Congregational Church near San Bernardino, CA, and as an associate conference minister for the Southern California Conference of the United Church of Christ, and is doing very well in both capacities. We had a very interesting experience traveling this last summer to the Marshall Islands, where we represented the UCC at a church conference there. Our daughter Brittany graduated from Berkeley with honors and is doing an internship at the California Supreme Court (in San Francisco), and plans to go to law school next fall. Our daughter Allison is attending Trinity College (TX) and is very excited about her classics major. I am continuing to teach at Pomona College, and do research regarding space-based gravitational wave detectors. The second edition of my introductory physics textbook (Six Ideas That Shaped Physics) was published by McGraw-Hill last winter that paid my way to Merida, Mexico this fall so I could talk up the book in anticipation of the publication of a Spanish translation. The highlight of my fall travels, however, was a trip back to Carleton in early November, where I gave three talks on different subjects, visited old friends and professors, and met the new members of the department. It was wonderful to have the opportunity to visit and to renew my connections with the department!

Class of 1977

Roger Johnston

Email: rogerj@lanl.gov

Greetings! Janie and I greatly enjoyed the Carleton alumni Chaco Canyon trip this October. Chaco is a real archeological mindblower from about 6 different angles. One of the best parts was having Joel Weisberg on hand to provide astronomy information, and to tell stories about the constellations—though frankly, I think altitude and dehydration were influencing some of his tales.

I’m still working with our 8-person vulnerability assessment team at Los Alamos. We now have a postdoc (physics Ph.D.), 3 techs, and 3 undergraduate students. The R&D involves defeating security devices and systems in order to try to improve them, as well as developing some of our own unique approaches to tamper and intrusion detection. (http://pearl1.lanl.gov/seals/default.htm)

This past year was particularly busy with lots of conferences and talks, and a host of new projects. I’m also now working on patent #10—an edible bowling ball.

Janie’s daughter, Kristal, is applying to Carleton, among other colleges. Fortunately, Carleton’s essay questions appear to be substantially less psychotic than many other schools.

With the drought and fire damage, bears have been coming into town quite a lot looking for food. A huge black bear climbed into our backyard last month, and our little 22-pound dog didn’t hesitate for an instant before charging him. The bear could have squashed the dog with one paw, but it was the bear that was terrified. He leapt over our 4-foot fence, landed on the roof of the neighbor’s storage shed, and careened off, sprinting away at top speed. (Bears are amazingly athletic when they want to be!) Anyway, I took from this incident the lesson that big scary problems can be dealt with effectively if (like my dog) we are simply too stupid to know our limitations. Have a great 2004!

Mark Schneider

Email: SchneidM@Grinnell.edu

I had the pleasure of visiting Carleton in October with my son Woody who is a high school senior visiting college campuses. He ditched me to do the prospective-student-overnight business, so I had a chance to visit former instructors, newer faculty, and current students in the physics department. I even got a chance to drop in on a sing-along in the evening with a banjo borrowed from Bill Titus! It was great to see old friends and make new ones. Here at home, I am in my second and final year as Science Division Chair at Grinnell College, and eager to ignore campus politics next year.

Richard Snodgrass

Email: rts@cs.arizona.edu

URL: http://www.cs.arizona.edu/people/rts

Phone: (520) 621-6370

Address: 701 East Camino Alberca, Tucson, AZ 85718

I was on sabbatical for the spring semester, 2003. Ah, the joys of being a tenured academic! I took that time to think about whether computer science is a science. My tentative answer, after much study, is: no, but it can and should be. So now I'm revisiting my Carleton physics training and the course I took there on the philosophy of science, in an effort to understand better the connections. It is interesting how things have come around full circle, with a period of 25 years. Cheers

Class of 1979

David Buettner

Email: djbuettner@lucent.com Phone: (630) 717 1266 Address: 1024 Amberwood Circle Naperville, IL 62563 My update for this year isn't much different than last year. While Lucent Technologies is continuing to lay off people, I am still fortunate to still be employed. I still work in quality assurance, and I have worked for and have recently received a certification as a Six Sigma Black Belt. This will help me if I find I'm in need of a job. It's still not clear when it will all turn around, but I remain hopeful. The family is busy in both the girl and cub scouts with my daughter in 7th grade and my son in 2nd grade; the parents are active volunteers. Both are doing well in school. My daughter is still playing the trumpet and piano. She was invited to play in the school Jazz Ensemble. Both played sports this fall with one in volleyball and the other in soccer. That's all for this year. Hope everyone has a joyous and peaceful holiday season, best wishes to all.

Eric Graf

Email: ericgraf@c-breeze.com

I have always had good intentions of getting something into the alumni letter but somehow I always miss the deadline. Not this year! The years keep going by faster and faster. My boys are 8 and 10 years old right now and our lives seem to be consumed by soccer. It starts in the spring with practice, then games and tournaments, a brief pause in August for us all to catch our breath and then back to it in the fall. Not only did I watch all the games, I also volunteered to participate as an assistant coach. As one parent put it, it is a way to keep them out of trouble in the neighborhood. So my life is consumed by parenting, but I'm not complaining. I get a chance to relive my childhood through watching them. I also took up golf this summer. One of my colleagues at work jokingly asked, "Does your family know about this?" I've had a lot of fun with it, primarily because I don't take it too seriously. Pauline is progressing with her writing career and gets more and more responsibility each year she works for the local newspaper.

I'm still with the same company, General Dynamics. I have been able to work on some "cool" projects this year, including some new computer designs for satellites. The world of reliability engineering is changing and moving towards a more "physics of failure" oriented approach. I will be traveling out to the University of Maryland next week to review their latest physics of failure experiments. General Dynamics is part of a consortium of companies that pool their resources and support a physics of failure program out their known as CALCE. It is quite fascinating. They look at construction techniques and materials for the latest and greatest electronic devices in an attempt to define their weak points. Of particular interest is the move away from classic lead-based solders to lead-free solders. Before I risk boring the rest of you with the gory details of my career, I'll close by wishing everyone Happy Holidays!

Lowell D. Jacobson

Email: lowell@cognex.com

Mobile phone: (617) 784-1380

Address: 2 Lottie Drive Grafton, MA 01519

We're still in central Massachusetts, living in a cozy New England colonial in the town of Grafton. Our daughter Samantha has recently started kindergarten. And Elke is threatening to go back to work after taking the last couple of years off to be a stay-at-home Mom.

We recently spent a long weekend in Plymouth, MA, along with my parents, so Samantha could visit a home once lived in by John Howland, one of the Mayflower passengers, and get a taste of Pilgrim life at the "Plimoth Plantation." By strange coincidence, I learned years after moving from Minnesota to Massachusetts that, through my mother's side of the family, I am a 13th generation descendent of Mayflower passengers John Howland and Elizabeth Tilley, making Samantha a 14th generation Daughter of the Mayflower. Also, five generations of our ancestors of Mayflower lineage (Bassets) lived in the town of Chilmark on Martha's Vineyard. These connections to the past have led us to new and interesting places and strengthened our bond with New England.

Regarding career and what became of my Carleton physics education, I've now been in vision-related research and engineering for 22 years. Having bailed out of my academic career in the early 90's, I'm currently in my ninth year at Cognex Corporation, the largest machine vision company in the world. I'd be surprised if anyone reading this newsletter has ever heard of Cognex. (And no, we're not talking about the Alzheimer's drug by the same name.) And maybe you are wondering what machine vision is too? At Cognex, we like to say we build computers that can "see." Our machine vision systems are widely used in semiconductor capital equipment and electronic assembly machines—for alignment and inspection. Our systems are also increasingly used in general manufacturing to track and inspect products, and as "eyes" for robots.

One of our traditional strengths at Cognex has been our ability to find stuff in images. In the 80's Cognex introduced systems that could find "translated" patterns in images. In the 90's, we upped the ante with systems that could find patterns that are "rotated and scaled." Now in the 00's, we have introduced systems that find patterns under "perspective" distortion as well as severe "rubber-sheet nonlinear" distortions. Sexy stuff for sure, but before you get too excited, I should point out that our systems are still just locating two-dimensional patterns in images. But with Moore's Law filling our sails, in 10-15 years I expect we will offer systems that rapidly locate complex three-dimensional objects in imaged scenes. In the meantime, our vision systems remain quite primitive despite steady advances in the field. Although the machine vision business has existed for 25 years or so, the worldwide market for machine vision systems is still relatively modest with total annual revenues of roughly one billion US dollars. However, I expect phenomenal market growth during my lifetime. This is mainly because vision is the primary sensory system of all mammals including humans. Imagine a world in which all humans were suddenly blind. What kind of economic output could we sustain in this state of blindness? Well today, we have a world of mostly blind machines "doing their best" to support our prosperity. Imagine a future world of sighted machines ranging from automatic doors to automobiles to construction robots. What kind of value would their sight add to the worldwide economy?

Well, back to the present, we would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a joyous holiday season, and many pleasant surprises in the coming year.

James Simmons

Email: jsimmons@waynesburg.edu

"It's been quite a while since I've contributed to the annual newsletter—long enough that I've built up quite a stockpile of news. Since 1999, I have been the one-person physics department at Waynesburg College, a Carleton-sized college in the extreme southwest corner of Pennsylvania. Last summer, I had the opportunity to pursue my main scholarly interest by spending a month participating in the Templeton Oxford Seminar on Christianity and Science. I go back to Oxford in the summers of ‘04 and ‘05 for two more rounds of the Seminar. My wife, Tracey Henderson, also teaches at Waynesburg (International Studies and Environmental Studies) as well as part-time at the University of Pittsburgh. Our oldest child, Hannah (5), is enjoying kindergarten and piano lessons and our youngest, Micah (3), loves his pre-school. One more child is on the way. In May, Tracey took a group of college students on a service-learning trip to Haiti, during which, they spent a lot of time at an orphanage. Tracey and one of the children at the orphanage, Sarah Widlene, fell in love with each other and we are now in the process of adopting Sarah. It's a long process; we expect she will be able to come to the US in spring 2004. I wish you joy and peace and I hope I'll see some of you at the 25th year reunion next year.

Dave Wiesler

Email: davewiesler@earthlink.net

URL: www.azaleacityrecordings.com/davewiesler

Address: 28 Blue Jay Drive, Newark, DE 19713-1210 Phone: (302) 369-3218

In July Julie finished up her six-year residency in plastic and reconstructive surgery at the Univ. of Virginia. She joined a private practice in Newark, DE, and we moved up to Newark in August. We're settling in to our new haunts, and she is finding private practice to be a lot better than residency. I am continuing to play music professionally.