My parents families immigrated from Ireland to New York City
in the nineteenth century and most of them still reside in that
area. Dad is a retired NY Fire Department officer with 37 years
of service. Mom was a telephone operator for Bell and later
worked for NY State in the motor vehicle department. Members
of my family are in many professions including farming, commercial
fishing, trucking, firefighting, the police, US military and especially
among my generation - teaching.
As an Irish Catholic kid in New York City meant going through
the parochial (Catholic, Protestant, Jewish or whatever) school
system there. I attended Holy
Cross High School on a NYFD
scholarship and graduated in 1965. While there played I played
some football, some basketball and worked in the print shop
doing the artwork for school publications and fixing and running
the presses.
After H.S. I went off to Iona College
in New Rochelle, NY
to play basketball and later on rediscovered my studies.
My majors were physics, chemistry and math, with minors
in philosophy and history. Graduation came in June 1969.
It was there that computing became an interest. Iona had the
first on-campus computer center in the NY area.
In fall of that year I took off for grad school at Queen's
University
in Kingston, Ontario where I worked in the field of molecular
spectroscopy (Physical Chemistry/Chemical Physics).
I was lucky enough to work for a great supervisor
who had
lab privileges at Canada's
National Research Council in Ottawa.
That's where I first got into laser work and first found out the
relation of my field to astronomy. That lab is now the Stacie
Institute for Molecular Sciences
(formerly the Herzberg
Institute
of Astrophysics).
Dr.
Herzberg was the director of the lab
and won the Nobel
Prize while I was a student working in
his branch…not that I had anything to do with his award
but it was pretty cool to be there and work on related
projects. During those years I got interested not just in
lasers but in computer simulation. That brought me into
my first contact with the University of Tennessee. The
professors here were pioneers in spectroscopy and
computers applied to that area. UT also was one of the
best equipped computer places in the US (and still is!).
The people here were working on NASA projects. In
1971 I started being a visiting grad student here at UT.
Coming down here in February and noticing I didn't need
ice scrapers and mukluks was a revelation.
I came to UT as a postdoc in 1975 and taught in the
Math Department for three years while I did research in
the Dept. of Physics & Astronomy.
When I started
teaching in The Physics
Department I decided that since my
research was pulling me more and more into astronomy
that teaching it might be a good idea. Therefore, I have
been doing that ever since. I also teach engineers and
architects various physics courses. I also am an adjunct
professor at Maryville College
(Maryville, TN) where I
teach courses in astronomy and one of other areas of
interest - medical physics/medicine in society.
My research led me to work as a visiting scientist at
NASA/Goddard
Space Flight Center (Greenbelt, MD
outside Wash., DC) where my students and I worked in
support
of the Voyager, Cassini
and Galileo Missions.
Our group here still continues
that work. The group
studies comets, infrared stars and does image processing
for the Hubble Space Telescope. Recently they have
even worked on the Smithsonian project
to help preserve
"The Star Spangled Banner".
For ten years (1980-1990) I also held a joint appointment
between UTK and Concordia University
(Montreal)
where I was an Associate Professor and University
Fellow in the Department of Chemistry.
My personal interests (past and present) include art,
history, stamp collecting, reading,
travel and of course -
sports (UT).