Tucked away up on the hill, behind Ayres Hall and above that famous little snack shop, Ray's Place, like a hidden jewel in a treasure box is the office of a man with the title of distinguished professor of physics. The name on the door reads Joseph H. Macek (pronounced May-sik). But you may not find him there because he is always being called away to be honored or to report on his research and ideas. He has been a visiting scientist in Denmark, Germany, Russia and France—all over the world really.

"Working out of the country isn't too different because English is used everywhere, so that's easy, but the customs are tough," Macek said. "The first time I went to Russia was in 1967 and there weren't any advertisements. It was very strange. Just imagine Kingston Pike without any advertisements. I didn't return until sometime around 1993, and now, of course, it looks completely different."

Macek joined the UT faculty in 1988 and through all his travelling he keeps coming back to Knoxville. Why? Simply, "It's home."

In August, Macek found himself in Ontario, Canada at the University of Windsor for the Sixteenth International Conference on Atomic Physics (ICAP). The conference honored the 25th anniversary of a paper he co-authored in 1973 with Ugo Fano of the University of Chicago. The paper, "Impact Excitation and Polarization of the Emitted Light," is included in "The First Hundred Years," a collection of more than 1000 papers put together by The Physical Review representing the forefront discoveries made in physics since 1893. The collection includes works by Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, and Richard Feynman.

The Accidental Physicist

In the fall of 1998 Macek taught atomic physics for graduate students. For the past few years he has taught Physics 131, the introductory course for non-science majors. During the spring and summer of 1997, he was a visiting scientist at the Institute for Theoretical Atomic and Molecular Physics at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The center's goal is to bring people and their ideas together. While there, Macek gave a series of lectures, did research, and organized a workshop that took place this past summer. The workshop was a continuation of the research he was doing here at UT.

At present he is studying an idea that grew out of his Harvard research involving states of matter. His interest at the moment concentrates on "the theory of ion-atom and electron collisions, electron correlation in atoms, and the coulomb three-body problem." He explains that the basic idea of his research is that if you take one atom and add it to another atom of the same type you get a molecule. Sometimes when you put two atoms together, they won't stick, but three will. This is called the three-body problem, and he is trying to figure out why this happens. Research like this may lead to a better understanding of how atoms work. A long way down the line we might use this information to create a better way to do quantum computations and build new computers.

Behind many doors scattered within a maze of buildings on the UT campus, people such as Joseph H. Macek continue the search for knowledge, filling the treasure box of ideas that make up our University.

Melissa M. Alfred is a senior in Biology and likes to write about science and environmental issues.

Back to Cross Sections, Fall 1998 issue.