Welcome to our annual holiday newsletter. We sincerely appreciate all of your responses and it gives us great pleasure and joy to follow the many paths you have taken. We again had an excellent response rate and we hope you enjoy hearing about everyone as much as we have.

I’d like to give you a brief update on the department. Joel Weisberg returned from sabbatical leave in Australia where he continued his work on pulsars. Arjendu Pattanayak has also returned from a Northfield sabbatical where he continued his work on complex systems and took several long trips, including one to the Santa Fe Institute. Melissa Eblen-Zayas has joined the department in a tenure track position. Melissa is a recent graduate from the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Minnesota and works on electronic and magnetic properties of surfaces. Nelson Christensen is on sabbatical this year at the University of Pisa doing gravitational wave work. As a matter of fact, his apartment is just several of blocks from the Leaning Tower. Bjorn Graneli, a condensed matter physicist from Sweden, is visiting the department this year trying to understand what liberal arts colleges are all about. Finally Anne Passe, our administrative assistant, retired in August and has been replaced by Mary Drew. Mary, who graduated from the College of St. Benedict, is a native Minnesotan and has been a Northfield resident for fifteen years.