Jearl Walker

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Jearl Dalton Walker (born January 20, 1945 in Pensacola (Florida) ) is an American physicist, best known as a non-fiction author and former columnist for Scientific American .

Walker grew up in Fort Worth and studied physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , where he received his bachelor's degree in 1967. In 1973 he received his PhD from the University of Maryland . He has been teaching since 1973, first as an assistant professor, then an associate professor and since 1981 as a physics professor at Cleveland State University , and from 1985 to 1989 he was also chairman of the physics faculty. He has received several awards for his teaching at the university (a Jearl Walker Outstanding Teaching Award will be named after him there; he was the first to be awarded in 2005). He is known for his book Flying Circus of Physics , which first appeared in 1975, and physics columns (amateur scientist) in the well-known popular science journal Scientific American, which he edited from 1978 to 1988 (several books emerged from the 152 columns). From 1977 to 1990 he was an editorial member of Scientific American. From 1990 he also edited the new edition of the Halliday-Resnick (by David Halliday and Robert Resnick ), an introductory (richly illustrated) physics textbook known in the USA. In the USA he is also known on television for spectacular demonstrations of experiments, for example in the Tonight Show by Johnny Carson and in his own PBS series Kinetic Karnival .

In the book The Flying Circus of Physics numerous everyday physical phenomena are presented and asked for explanations (the solutions can be found in an answer section of the book).

He has been married since 1984 and has four children.

Fonts

  • The flying circus of physics. (Original title: The Flying Circus of Physics, translated by Karen Lippert and Micaela Krieger-Hauwede) 9th, expanded edition. Oldenbourg, Munich 2007 (first edition 1977), ISBN 978-3-486-58067-9
  • with David Halliday, Robert Resnick: Physik , (Original title: Fundamentals of physics ) 2nd expanded edition, Wiley-VCH, Weinheim 2007, ISBN 3-527-40746-4 .
  • A kink in optics - entertaining experiments from Spectrum of Science, Fischer Taschenbuch 1992
  • A ball with a twist - entertaining experiments from the spectrum of science, Fischer Taschenbuch 1990
  • Roundabout: the physics of rotation in the everyday world- Readings from Scientific American, Freeman 1985
  • Editor: Light and its uses: making and using lasers, holograms, interferometers, and instruments of dispersion, Readings from Scientific American, Freeman 1980
  • Editor: Light from the sky - Readings from Scientific American. Freeman 1980
  • Physics of everyday phenomena - Readings from Scientific American. Freeman 1979

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Life data according to American Men and Women of Science , Thomson Gale 2004
personal data
SURNAME Walker, Jearl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Walker, Jearl Dalton (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American physicist
DATE OF BIRTH January 20, 1945
PLACE OF BIRTH Pensacola (Florida)