Richard H. Price
Professor of Physics
B. Eng. Phys., 1965, Cornell University
Ph.D., 1971, California Institute of Technology
Postdoctoral, 1971, California Institute of Technology
Professor of Physics, U of Utah 1971-2004
Office : SETB 1.354 Phone : (956)882-6648
Email : rprice@phys.utb.edu
Link to Physics 5441 page
In 2004, after 33 years as a professor of physics at the University of Utah, I joined the other young people at the Physics Department, and the Center for Gravitational Wave Astronomy at the University of Texas at Brownsville.
My primary field of research interest is relativistic gravitation (i.e., Einstein's general relativity) and its application to astrophysics. Since the middle 90s I have been focusing in particular on the black hole collisions that are the most exciting potential sources of gravitational waves that might be detectable with such instruments as the US LIGO project. Computing such collisions is also considered the "holy grail" of numerical relativity (the solution of Einstein's equations on supercomputers). Like much of modern day research, my work is done in collaboration with others. I continue to work with Prof. Ben Bromley at Utah and "officially" with one graduate student at Utah, Maria Cranor. Work with other graduate students at Utah has begun. One graduate student, Michael McLaughlin, is working with me at UTB. My recent collaborators at other institutions include John Friedman at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; Chris Beetle at Florida Atlantic; Lior Burko, at Bates College; and especially Jorge Pullin at LSU.
I am also interested in applying the methods of physics and of applied mathematics to a much broader set of problems. This (partially) explains why I was an Adjunct Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Utah, and worked with the Center for Engineering Design and Sarcos Corporation on micromechanical devices. At UTB I will be working to develop an Engineering Physics degree that will combine elements of a physics and an engineering education. (My own undergraduate degree, perhaps appropriately, is Bachelor of Engineering Physics from Cornell University.)
I have also been interested in innovations in teaching physics and introduced collaborative learning techniques in the introductory calculus-based courses PHYCS 2220 at the University of Utah. My interest in innovations in teaching and in applying physics to a broad set of projects came together in the Physics of Modern Technology (PMT) program at the University of Utah. Most notably, this program gave rise to PHYCS 4910, a very successful course in technical communication, scientific judgment, and much more.
In my spare time I am on the editorial board of the all electronic physics journal New Journal of Physics and I am a Divisional Associate Editor of Physical Review Letters for gravitation, and a member of the editorial advisory board of American Journal of Physics. Recently (April 2002-April 2003) I was Chair of The Topical Group in Gravitation, an American Physical Society group specific to my field. I am presently chair of the Topical Group activities for the 2005 World Year of Physics. I am a fellow of the American Physical Society.
Other of my physics related activities have included a Hollywood movie. (This was a biography of Einstein. I played myself and have been told that I did a believable job.) Very recently I had a brief (one song) musical career as a member of the physics singing group Bernie and the Gravitones.
Books
- Problem Book in Relativity and Gravitation, (with Alan Lightman, William Press and Saul Teukolsky), (Princeton University Press, 1975).
- Black Holes: The Membrane Paradigm, (with K.S. Thorne and D.A. Macdonald), (Yale University Press, 1986).
- The Future of Spacetime (with T. Ferris, S. Hawking, A. Lightman, I. Novikov and K. S. Thorne), (W.W.Norton, 2002).
Some Recent Research Articles on General Relativity and Astrophysics
- ``Inspiralling black holes: the close limit" (with Gaurav Khanna, John Baker, Reinaldo J. Gleiser, Pablo Laguna, Carlos O. Nicasio, Hans-Peter Nollert, and Jorge Pullin), Phys. Rev. Letters, 83 pp. 3581-3584 (1999).
- ``Quantifying excitations of quasinormal mode system'' (with H.-P. Nollert) Journal of Mathematical Physics 40, pp. 980-1010, Feb. 1999.
- "Gravitational radiation from Schwarzschild black holes; the second order perturbation formalism" (with R. Gleiser, O. Nicasio, and J. Pullin), Physics Reports, 325, 41-81 (2000).
- "Close limit of grazing black hole collisions: non-spinning holes" (with G. Khanna, R. Gleiser and J. Pullin), New Journal of Physics 2, 3, 2000.
- ``Quasi-stationary binary inspiral II: Radiation balanced boundary conditions" (with J. Whelan and W. Krivan), Classical and Quantum Gravity. 17, 4895 (2000).
- ``Tidal interaction in binary black hole inspiral" (with John T. Whelan), Phys. Rev. Lett. 87, 231101 (2001).
- ``The Periodic Standing-Wave Approximation: Overview and Three Dimensional Scalar Models'' (with Z. Andrade, C. Beetle, A. Blinov, B. Bromley, L. M. Burko, M. Cranor, R. Owen) to appear in Phys. Rev. D gr-qc/0310001.
- ``Radiation tails and boundary conditions for black hole evolutions" (with Elspeth W. Allen, Elizabeth Buckmiller, and L. M. Burko) to appear in Phys. Rev.D Preprint gr-qc/0401092.
- ``Normal forces in stationary spacetimes,'' vol. 36, GRG, pp. 2171-2173, gr-qc/0401123
Some Recent Articles on Physics Pedagogy
- ``In-depth problems for collaborative learning,'' in the Proceedings of the International Conference on Undergraduate Physics Education, U. Maryland, July 31--Aug. 3, 1996, (AIP, Woodbury, New York, 1997) p.831.
- ``Aim High and Go Far - Optimal Projectile Launch Angles Greater than 45o,'' (with Joseph Romano) American Journal of Physics, 66, p. 109, 1998.
- ``Expand your students' universe" (with E. Grover), to appear in American Journal of Physics, October 1999.
- ``A circular twin paradox" (with M.Cranor and E. Heider), American Journal of Physics, 68, pp.1016-1020, 2000.
- ``Ballistic trajectory: parabola, ellipse, or what?" (with L. M. Burko) to appear in American Journal of Physics physics/0310049
Some Other Publications of Interest for Various Reasons
- ``Gravitation,'' in Encarta the Microsoft CD-ROM encyclopedia.
- ``The Membrane Paradigm for Black Holes,'' (with K.S. Thorne) Scientific American, 256, 69 (1988).
- ``Detecting Proton Magnetization via 13 C-Coupled Relaxation Studies" (with R. Brown and D. Grant) J. Magn. Reson. A110, p. 38 (1994).
- The Wobble Motor: Design, Fabrication and Testing of an Eccentric-Motion Electrostatic Microactuator," (with Jacobsen, S.C.; Wood, J.E.; Rytting, T.R.; Rafaelof, M)., Published in Sensors and Actuators, 20 Nos. 1 & 2, pp. 1-16 (1989).