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Memoir
Jean P. Krisch
Regents' Proceedings
Regents' Proceedings
Jean P. Krisch, Ph.D., Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and professor of physics in the College of Literature, Science and the Arts, will retire from active faculty status on December 31, 2017.
Professor Krisch received her B.S. (1960) degree from the University of Maryland and her M.S. (1962) and Ph.D. (1965) degrees from Cornell University. She joined the University of Michigan faculty as a lecturer in 1974, and was promoted to associate professor in 1989, and professor in 1997. She was named the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor in 1991.
Professor Krisch's research focused on general relativity and some of its extensions. Working with collaborators in the United States, Canada, and Turkey, she explored the behavior of complex fluids in exact solutions to the Einstein field equations and the methods of adding rotation to static matter distributions. Professor Krisch received two honorable mentions in the Babson Gravity Essay Contest for the essays, "Dimension in a Radiative Stellar Atmosphere" (2000) and "Schwarzschild Atmospheric Processes: A Classical Path to the Quantum" (1999). She served as the undergraduate associate chair from 1987-92 and has been a physics academic counselor for many years. She helped organize the first University of Michigan Physics Summer Undergraduate Research Experience (REU) program at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in 1991 and continued to work on providing CERN research opportunities for undergraduates. Nationally, she served as president of the National Society of Physics Students Council from 1991-93 and as the national president of Sigma Pi Sigma Physics Honor Society from 1994-96. Throughout the years Professor Krisch has received numerous awards for her teaching and service, including the Amoco Good Teaching Award (1993), the Sarah Goddard Power Award (1992), and two LSA Excellence in Education Awards (1999 and 2005). She was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society in 1998.
The Regents now salute this distinguished scholar by naming Jean P. Krisch, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor Emerita and professor emerita of physics.