Charles Richardson Retires

Professor Charles Richardson is retiring this month after 31 years in the physics department. He, his wife Janet, and daughter Joan came from Seattle to a Fayetteville in which Sears had only a catalog store and the downtown square was ringed with shops, stores, and banks. About half the present campus buildings didn't exist, including Mullins Library and the Arkansas Union. David Mullins was president of the University of Arkansas and Paul Sharrah was chairman of the Physics Department. Daughter Martha was born two years later.

His first teaching assignment was University Physics, and those since have included most of the courses offered by the department, some 21 total. A special interest has been laboratory courses, and over the years he has developed such courses in electronics, astronomy, modern physics, and general physics. Some unusual teaching opportunities were planetarium shows for the public, shared with Paul Sharrah and Michael Lieber, and a special project at the time of energy shortages. The energy project involved travel to sites where alternative energy sources were being researched, and preparation of teaching materials based on this research. One such site for example was the Geysers where electricity is produced from steam produced deep underground.

Dr. Richardson includes, among the high points of his teaching career, the time he came to his College Physics class to find a note on the table saying "For the teacher." It was held in place by an apple. Among the low points was an astronomy lab with telescopes set up in winter on the floor of Razorback Stadium. The wind chill factor was in the single digits.

His research at Arkansas has been mainly in optics, much of it involving the scattering of light from single microscopic particles levitated electrically. This work has been with several graduate students over the years. One, Chuck Kurtz, was investigating changes in a lithium iodide particle exposed to water vapor at low pressures. At sharply defined vapor pressures the particle changed phase, or rearranged atoms to accommodate the entry of water molecules. Shortly before a scheduled trip by Dr. Richardson to talk about the work, he and Chuck found a phase in which 5 water molecules were in place for each 3 lithium iodides, a phase never seen before. A phone call to Chuck on the morning of the talk confirmed that the 5/3 phase was reproducible, so it was reported.

Besides working with students, Dr. Richardson has had fruitful research collaborations with colleagues at Brookhaven National Laboratories and the Naval Research Lab. He has traveled to Corfu, Greece, Corsica, Vienna and many places in the U.S. to report on research.

Following his retirement, Dr. Richardson will remain involved with teaching activities in the department. For recreation he has tennis, mountain biking, cooking (especially bread baking), gardening, and British car maintenance. And he tells us that there are countless places for him and Janet to travel.*