Class of 1970

Bill Egbert
Email: wcegbert@mmm.com
Work Phone: (651) 733-6379

This year, my 25th year at 3M, finds me still working in product development for Smart Labels (Radio Frequency IDentification, aka RFID). My work has evolved from tag design and manufacturing technology toward system considerations, combining electro-magnetics, mechanical design, and design for manufacture with RF waveguide and antenna design. This boundary value problem is defined by the price the market will pay and the cost to produce, with occasional afterthoughts to the physics of the situation. Being the designated physicist in the group, one of my functions is to provide a reality check when the Power Point marketing presentations get a little too fanciful. Even so, as I look back over my 25 years in research at 3M and consider how electronics integration, computational power, and software systems have completely revolutionized my work, I am eager to see how far we can push this technology in the future.

I had the particular pleasure of visiting with the Carleton Physics Department in Spring 2004. I gave a presentation in the "What Physicists Do" series, focusing on my career in Industrial Research. I also took the opportunity to thank Rich Noer for getting me started in physics research with my senior laboratory project on magnetic flux quantization. I'm still chasing flux quanta, except now, I calculate about 10E15 at a time.

Larry Alquist
Email: lalquist@emh.org
Phone: (207) 942-7474

Happy Holidays to All!! Medical physics at the community hospital continues as my day job, and helps fuel Minnesota small liberal arts colleges (Greta at Macalester, Erik at Gustavus). Ingrid remains the sole high schooler at our place in Bangor and shows some interest and considerable aptitude in the math/physics pathway. (From an early age she was the best in the family at putting together puzzles ... couple this with the curiosity of a child and you have the makings of a physicist!!) I gave a PowerPoint-based radiation-physics lecture to 4 chemistry classes at Bangor High this fall and came away with the notions that there are wonderful young people (and families) in this community and that teaching is one of the most honorable performance arts. I was blessed at Carleton during my student days and I'm sure the tradition continues.

Mike Lauterbach

Margaret and I moved to Hamden, Connecticut last year. She is associate dean for research at the Yale Nursing School. I continue at LeCroy Corporation, maker of the world’s finest oscilloscopes. We will be spending Christmas and New Year’s at our place in Vermont where a white Christmas is fairly certain. A Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all.

Ted Dunham

Dear all, this year we are empty nesters. Russell, our youngest, is a freshman at Lawrence and enjoying it a great deal. Sarah is a senior at Colby and is somewhat more stressed out as graduation looms. She has become interested in geology education and wrote some curriculum at the K-12 level to go with an existing set of geology-related activities. She worked with the author of the original curriculum, "Rock Detective", and her new sections have been incorporated for future use. Elizabeth is defending her Master's thesis in history at the University of Tennessee the day before Thanksgiving. She expects to remain in Knoxville working in the special collections section of the library where she is Webmaster, among other things. Jeannie continues her job as library media specialist at Flagstaff High School, and is becoming adept at solving intractable Microsoft (and user!) problems. She wishes she could spend more time building up the print collection there and less time being a system administrator!

It's been a big year for me. SOFIA is finally coming together and our group spent a jolly six weeks in Waco starting at the beginning of August for the first ground test and calibration of the telescope on real stars using our instrument, HIPO. This went very well—the telescope is a beautiful piece of work! The main activity has shifted back to the aircraft with the first airworthiness test flights planned for late January or February. Last summer our collaboration searching for transiting "hot Jupiters" by using wide field, small telescopes found our first extrasolar planet, TrES-1. The approach of using small telescopes results in discovery of brighter objects than searches such as the OGLE one that use larger telescopes. We look forward to the results of our planned follow-up observations with HST, Spitzer, and SOFIA. Kepler passed its preliminary design review with flying colors, and is going full steam ahead toward a scheduled launch in the fall of 2007. Our 4-meter telescope project, the Discovery Channel Telescope, held a two-day design review last summer. We are presently working some of the more troublesome design issues, primarily things related to the 2-degree field prime focus assembly, and are looking for a partner to help financially, technically, and scientifically during the development period and later in the operations phase.

Best wishes to all of you for the New Year!

Dayton Jones
Email: dj@sgra.jpl.nasa.gov

Hello to all. My main activity this year has been working on the science case and the design of an international project called the Square Kilometer Array. This is intended to be the grand next-generation instrument for radio astronomy, with about 100 times the sensitivity of any existing radio telescope or array. Its design involves a number of neat new technologies to make the whole thing affordable. It's been a lot of fun. I continue to be surprised at how useful training in physics can be, even in areas far removed from any courses I ever took. Debra and our daughters Alice (12) and Ellen (10) are fine, and join me in wishing all of you the best. Cheers.

Bob Nelson
Email: shebob23@comcast.net

Hi all! Professionally it was a pretty uneventful year until September when Cisco decided to close its Storage Router division in the Twin Cities. All in all it was good thing because I was getting kind of stale there anyway. I am looking forward to the next adventure and will probably stay in the software business.

Our family is doing well. Townhouse living has made us somewhat lazy but we are looking forward to the next step (empty nest syndrome) on our path to a laid back lifestyle!

Sheila and I attended the 30th reunion in June and enjoyed seeing Paul Epton there.

Tim Brunner

Hi all: I just spent a nice hour reading about my old friends in the 2002 and 2003 physics newsletters posted on the website. To my horror, I found that for both of those years, my own contribution prominently featured the unique observation that life is experienced in a logarithmic manner. This prompts the question, how many times have I done the 'life is logarithmic' shtick in this newsletter?? My best estimate would be 3 +/- 1. If anybody has historical records to check this out, please get back to me!

I will now stick to events over the past 12 months, since I am fairly certain that I am not repeating myself. I dislocated my shoulder in an extremely stupid cross-country ski accident. (Don’t use downhill turning methods!) Surgery went OK, and I am nearly back to normal. I had a wonderful trip to Vancouver in early August. I would love to go back and maybe even attempt a little mountain biking. My biggest fright this year was when 3 of my 4 children were within 1/2 mile of the republican national convention in NYC. It occurred to me that a nuclear terrorism event might happen, and I just could not stop worrying about them. Thankfully, nothing happened, but I still feel that the unbelievably stupid actions of the Bush Administration have endangered our children for many years to come.

Have you ever noticed that life is experienced logarithmically? Blah blah blah. Regards to all my friends.

Sally Fairman Mills
Email: sfmills@sbcglobal.net

Life is good and I'm enjoying living on my own. I am doing marketing and advertising for Schaum Publications, publishers of educational piano music. I re-joined the Milwaukee Choristers in January of '04—it is so nice to be singing again! Leslie is a Junior at Beloit College having declared Creative Writing as her major, but may switch to Comparative Literature with a minor in Museum Studies. Kelly and Kyle are sophomores in high school. Their activities keep me plenty busy. Kelly is in dance, band, color guard and Milwaukee Youth Chorale. Kyle is also in Youth Chorale, plus school choir, and very much into theater. He did Shakespeare this summer, then 'Rock Horror', and was Peter Pan in the high school fall play. It's never boring around here, that's for sure!

Mark Jaeger

Hello all, we have a different household this year due to the departure of our youngest child, Jcob for college in Colorado. Other than that, still working for Oracle, still living in Chicago land, still suffering nightmares from Bill Titus problem sets. (Can you say post-traumatic stress?) No, seriously everything is fine. Visitors are always welcome, and maybe I'll see some classmates at the reunion. Cheers

Kathy Krafft

Email: kkrafft@sciencenter.org
Address: 10 Snyder Hill Court
Ithaca NY 14850
Phone: (607) 272-0600 ext 25, work(607) 273-0675 home

Having my daughter Caroline return from a fabulous fall term as a sophomore at Carleton is inspiring/reminding me to write! She's practically finished her Classics major (having started Greek last year, and taken upper-level Latin classes) and is probably going to double-major in Anthropology as well. She's also part of the equestrian team, walks dogs for the SPCA, and makes time for friends and performances on campus.

Victoria is a senior Computer Science major at Harvey Mudd College; she's thinking about a Master's degree, but wants to work for real companies as she loves software/hardware and has worked in the department for the past 2 summers. I made it out last May for the Clinic presentations days: computer science and engineering majors do real year-long projects in teams of ~4 does for real companies, culminating in a poster session and series of 1/2 hour presentations; I got to read most of the 30+ posters, and attend several other presentations as well which was really neat. And I got to stay with Patti and Larry Sparks. And afterwards, Victoria had time (it was study week) for a day along the beach/coastline.

Jennifer is a junior in high school, so we'll be starting another round of college visits this spring—liberal arts for sure, with special interests in Spanish, linguistics, and philosophy right now.

All is well here. Having a small lull between major grant projects is enabling me to catch up a bit, after over 2 years of 80-hour weeks on average. Our attendance has exceeded expectations since our expansion opened ~ 2 years ago, so we're working to keep the museum vibrant and changing!

We've got four exhibitions out on the road now, and are acquiring a national reputation in fact. We've got one exhibition in Anchorage, Alaska and another in Tallahassee, Florida right now!

We're just starting up on three new grant projects—one major traveling exhibition on photolithography and nanodevices (which means a lot of microscopy etc. to get visitors oriented to the world they can't see—most adults don't have a clue about molecules, let alone the real scale of nano), one project on earthquakes to stay at the Sciencenter, and a new traveling exhibition on the science of transportation and moving stuff.

Big accomplishment of last year was getting, "It's a Nano World" to Innoventions at Epcot Center where ~ a million people went thru in the 6 months that it was there; its stay was extended twice as Epcot staff and visitors were really enjoying it, especially in comparison to computer-based stuff in the rest of Innoventions apparently. Some National Science Foundation officers got to visit the exhibition there and were quite impressed, and aptly noticed that kids and adults were active and engaged with microscopes, video scopes, sorting "cells" etc.—so we've got brownie points as they had been trying for years to get science into a place like that, and we pulled it off very successfully (there were many legal and electrical and building code issues to overcome to do this). The 2 full size trailer truckloads of exhibits came back here for the summer, were refurbished and now the exhibition is touring museums around the country for 4-month venues (Healthspace in Cleveland at the moment).
Check it out at the following sites: http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Jan04/NanoExhibit.bpf.html and http://www.itsananoworld.org
Hope everyone is doing well.

David B. Rogers
Email: lv2ski@cybermesa.com
Phone: (505) 667-0313 (w)
(505) 672-9786 (h)

I'm happy to say that I've successfully updated all my safety procedures and returned to full work here at Los Alamos. There has been much nail-biting here about that, and about whether the University of California will retain the contract it has held for over 60 years to operate the Lab. My work in environmental monitoring at the Laboratory consists of navigating a thin passage between many attracting and repelling forces of institutional and regulatory requirements; budgetary limits; the expectations of the institution, regulators, and the public; and also one's own ambitions and expectations. Sounds familiar to many, I expect!

I've also moved to a new home that I'm remodeling somewhat—a fun diversion and a change for me. And this year I finished a long-time project of climbing the 100 highest peaks in Colorado. Some snow the last few days in the mountains—perhaps an end to seven years of drought is approaching?

Tad Elmer
Email: elmer@bbn.com
Phone: (617) 873-4194 (work)
(401) 846-5787 (home)

This has been a long, but ultimately satisfying year. BBN went through the long and stressful process of being sold by the phone company, but we are now once again an independent company pushing technology forward, particularly in the areas of intelligent distributed computing, computer speech and language understanding, mobile ad hoc networking, quantum cryptography and a host of other areas. It's too early to say if any of our current projects will have the impact of time-sharing, packet switching or email (all BBN firsts). But we're having great fun, and I have to get used to a whole new role as the CEO. I still get rare chances to think about technical issues, though I seem to be pretty outclassed at that these days.

Eleanor continues to work in social work therapy, and Rachel and Selena are senior and freshman in high school, respectively. Rachel has already applied early admission for college, unfortunately not at Carleton.

I hope that any of you visiting Rhode Island (home) or Cambridge, Mass (work) will let me know—it would be fun to get together.

George J. Jelatis

As it was for my classmates, this past year saw me hit 50. The good news, of course, is that I'm no longer a perfect square. The bad news is that 50 is still too low to score a flu shot this year, so I write with an ague-ridden body. Wouldn't you think a whole bunch of chemists could correctly cook us some eggs?

While not working this past year, I managed to oversee a significant kitchen and main floor renovation. I also repaired all manner of household electrical and mechanical devices that failed. Being trained as an experimentalist means "opening it up", not "throwing it out." Plus, I usually learn something.

As an assistant class agent, I'd like to remind all readers to consider a gift to the Annual Fund. Carleton's endowment is not as large as that of some other schools, but its alumni participation rate now leads the nation, which greatly helps attract external gifts. The low and the high of those numbers somehow seems Carlton-ish. The College still helps many students find themselves, and some life friends, just as it did for many of us. I made a summer road trip to Chicago to meet with about a dozen such life friends from near and far. For me, that's priceless. Happy Holidays!

Randall Ohman
Email: danwang@mindspring.com
Address: 1208 Wiltshire Avenue
San Antonio, TX 78209
Phone: (210) 829-5278

For the past 2 and half years I managed the engineering for a manufacturer of lock and sliding door mechanisms for prisons while a fellow was on leave from the company. Now I’m mostly trying to stay on top of a cancerous honey-do list at home. To be fair, my son is the most ardent slave driver. He has me helping in the restoration of what is his first car, a vintage VW bus. Now somewhat of an expert in these things, he persuaded me to buy an already restored one for myself, saying it’s a classy vehicle to show up for a job interview in compared to an also old, but unclassy Toyota. I am plenty old as it is, so the bus does feel like it fits. I just need some round Lennon glasses and a few other accessories. We had a wonderful road trip to get the bus, traveling 800 miles from SanAntonio to Albuquerque and back another 800 miles with small side trips to the VLA radio telescope facility and to power generating windmills, western New Mexico and western Texas respectively.

Mary Hibbs-Brenner
Email: maryhibbsbrenner@comcast.net
Address: 4275 Deerwood Lane N., Plymouth, MN 55441
Phone: (763) 550-1191

This year brought a few changes. I left my job at Honeywell in June after 20 years. 18-19 of those years had some ups and downs, but they were generally pretty good. The last 1-2 years were pretty rough. Last year, Honeywell sold the business I had worked on for 15 of my 20 years, and laid off my whole research group. Fortunately, most of them got different jobs back at Honeywell, but a few have moved on. I took a different job for a year doing business development for a new device developed within the R&D centeræbasically developing the business plan. I learned from the experience, but realized that I may no longer be a good match to the culture of a big corporation. Therefore, I left to attempt to get a new company off the ground, called Mytek, and am also doing a little consulting. Next year, I'll have to report how it turned out!

At home, things are progressing in a more linear manner. Our oldest son is 18, a senior, and in the market for a college. Carleton is on his list, but I'm not sure which college is at the top of the list. He is interested in science and engineering, so it is possible he might show up in Freshman Physics next year! He also runs track and cross-country and plays the cello. The younger son is 15 and a sophomore. He wants to be an architect, plays the saxophone, and devotes a lot of his free time to gymnastics. My husband, Mats, continues to develop navigation systems at Honeywell.

I hope this season finds everyone healthy and happy.

Roger Johnston
Email: rogerj@lanl.gov
URL: http://pearl1.lanl.gov/seals/default.htm

Greetings! Another interesting year at Los Alamos, breaking into security systems and trying to be a troublemaker ...er, I mean trying to improve homeland security.

LANL was shutdown for 3 months due to safety and security problems. This experience provided additional experimental evidence that the only problem with common sense is that it is apparently not all that common.

Janie and I traveled to Italy this summer for our third Carleton Alumni Adventure. This one involved going to the Coldigioco Geological Observatory near Gubbio to explore great food and the K/T boundary where the dinosaurs were barbecued. (Not much left of them, but I’ve always thought dinosaur is much better stir-fried, anyway.)

We also went to Scotland to drop Janie’s daughter off at St. Andrews University, where she is freshman. We’re hopeful she can avoid being burned at the stake like a number of St. Andrews students and rabble-rousers of the past. We then spent considerable time exploring castles, stone carvings, and battlefields—of which there is one or more of them approximately every 600 meters, sandwiched between golf courses. The history of Scotland is pretty much unbelievable/psychotic—they’ve packed more bizarre events into a small area than a Carleton post-game rugby party.

Have a great 2005!

Elaine McCluskey
Email: mccluskey@fnal.gov

As 2004 concludes I'm grateful to have been part of the team to finish the facility for the NuMI Project at Fermilab, where beam will be turned on in early 2005. The lab is talking now about the International Linear Collider for electron-positron collisions, which we'd like to see sited here in Illinois.

I'm also heading up a church-remodeling project for the foreseeable future, and enjoying leading a senior Girl Scout troop; both are rewarding and exciting.

Amy Rogers
Email: jcrogers@ultra2k.com

Hi all, I'm still teaching physics and physical science at Gateway HS in Aurora Colorado. This year I started an AP physics class. I've got 25 eager hardworking students so we'll see how they do when the AP exam comes around. It sure is fun digging a little deeper with students who have the math background to do it!

Last fall my husband, Jim, and I went to Africa with Eric Simonson and a group of '77 grads to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. It was the experience of a lifetime! Tanzania was incredible. We were on the mountain for 7 days (I didn't make it to the top but it was worth the trip anyway.) And then on a safari. Now we're looking for our next adventure!

My daughter, Kristin is a junior at Bradley University majoring in Environmental Engineering (Civil Engineering Department) and doing very well. She talks excitedly about wastewater treatment plants and sludge. My son, Craig, is a senior in high school. He's not too concerned with where to go to college, he just wants it to happen. I forced him to apply to Iowa State since he thought that one "wasn't too bad", so if he is accepted there, I expect that's where he'll go. My one rule on this is that he will not be living in my basement.
Happy holidays!

Jonathan Thron
Email: thron@anl.gov

It's been a while since I wrote to the newsletter—mainly because things haven't changed much! I'm still living in Illinois, working at Argonne National Lab in particle physics. I'm working on the MINOS experiment that is now almost done with construction and installation, and in a few months will be sending a beam of neutrinos from Chicago to northern Minnesota. It will measure some parameters of neutrino oscillation. Recently our group has been getting involved in another neutrino oscillation experiment using the neutrinos given off by nuclear reactors.

Martha continues to teach horticultural classes at the Morton Arboretum, as well as growing all sorts of interesting plants around our house: persimmons, paw paws, hardy kiwis, and even figs! I've had fun trying some stone carving and I'm almost done with being the executor for my father's estate.

David Buettner

It's hard for me to believe that it's been 25 years since we graduated. I do wonder where the time has gone. The 25th reunion back in June was a great time for me. I'm glad Jon Pryor talked me into going. I enjoyed the time and conversation with many of my fellow physics majors of 1979 including Jon, Michael, Eric, Debra, Lance, and Chuck (apologies if I forgot someone.) I also thought it was neat to be in front sitting in the choir pews during the alumni convocation.

I'm still with Lucent Technologies. In about a month, I will have my 25th service anniversary that started with Bell Labs, then an AT&T business unit, and then Lucent. The place is stabilizing and I'm feeling slight more at ease. My main role continues to be in software quality assurance.

I now have my first teenager with my daughter turning 13 and now in 8th grade. At her schools annual science fair, she took first place with her pendulum experiment. She's already talking about getting her drivers license. My son is now 8 years old and in 3rd grade. For the Cub Scouts this fall, I was the Popcorn Kernel who warehoused and distributed the pack popcorn for 12 dens and over 60 boys.
The big area for house repair this year was the garage; the GDO motor seized and I installed just the second one for the house. Also, a tension spring broke, but I let the professionals handle that. I did try and learned that you can't lift the garage door without those springs. These springs would be nice parts for a science experiment.
Best wishes to all during the holiday season.