Physics, Astronomy Restructured

Physics, Astronomy Restructured

Three-part Initiative to Ensure Success of Natural Sciences

RICE NEWS

December 2, 1999

Creating a critical mass to generate further success, the School of Natural Sciences has announced three major steps:

The merger of two separate departments–physics and space physics and astronomy–into a single Department of Physics and Astronomy on July 1, 2000;

Creation of a new center, provisionally named the Rice Space Institute, which will bring together space plasma researchers, scholars from other Rice departments and space specialists from other Houston-area institutions;

Searches for six faculty openings in the new department, in such specialties as atomic, molecular and optical physics; biophysics; computational plasma physics; theoretical or high-energy astrophysics; and nanoscale physics.

The new department will bring astronomers, astrophysicists and space plasma physicists together with scientists who study the physics of elementary particles, solids, surfaces, atoms and molecules and biological systems. The resulting larger department–33 to 35 faculty members–will offer a wider range of collaborations to faculty, research opportunities to graduate students and course offerings to undergraduates.

“We believe the whole truly will be greater than the sum of its parts,” said Kathleen Matthews, dean of the Wiess School of Natural Sciences. “The two departments did a farsighted examination of where their fields are going and what intellectually and structurally will provide the greatest possibilities for the future. The merger also will allow Rice to better compete for faculty and students, since 30 to 35 faculty members seem to be a minimum for recognition as a leading physics and astronomy department nationally.”

Barry Dunning, current chair of physics and chair of the new department, said that the merger will foster synergy among researchers who study similar physical processes that occur in very different environments.

“For example,” he said, “it will enhance interactions between faculty who study the reactions that occur in accelerator-based, high-energy physics experiments and those who study similar reactions in the distant universe.”

The new Rice Space Institute, to be led by Patricia Reiff, current chair of space physics and astronomy, continues Rice’s long-standing leadership in the field. After President Kennedy issued from Rice Stadium on Sept. 12, 1962, his historic call to go to the moon, Rice established the nation’s first space science program in 1963.

“The creation of the Rice Space Institute recognizes that space research involves many different academic disciplines,” Reiff said. “These include not just physical sciences but also engineering, biology, computational science and even history and education.”

The institute will advance such Rice programs as computational modeling of the Earth’s space environment, investigation of the causes and consequences of “space weather,” advanced interplanetary rocket propulsion based on plasma technology and studies of the space environments of other planets within the solar system. It also will engage in education and outreach and continue the close partnership the Department of Space Physics and Astronomy has had with NASA in the exploration of the terrestrial space environment, the solar system and the distant universe.