Walter S. Gray, Ph.D., associate professor of physics in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, will retire from active faculty status on May 31, 2002.

Professor Gray received his B.S. (1958) and M.S. (1960) degrees from Oklahoma State University and his Ph.D. degree (1964) from the University of Colorado. He joined the University of Michigan Department of Physics in 1964 as a research associate and was appointed instructor in 1965. He was promoted to assistant professor in 1966 and associate professor in 1970.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Professor Gray, together with Professors Tickle, Bardwick and Parkinson, developed a high-resolution magnetic spectrometer for use with the University of Michigan's 82-inch cyclotron using the so-called "dispersion-matching" technique. This cyclotron was one of the few in the world capable of high-resolution nuclear spectroscopy. Professor Gray and his students made a major improvement to the spectrometer by developing a position-sensitive, silicon-diode, focal-plane detector array 2002 which permitted electronic acquisition and analysis. Several University of Michigan doctoral students used this array to study in detail the characteristics of deformed nuclei, verifying the "collective model" of nuclei proposed by Benjamin Mottelson and Aage Bohr. Professor Gray served on the Rackham Divisional Board for the Physical Sciences (1973-74) and the executive committee of the Indiana University Cyclotron Facility users' group (1980-82). In 1978, he received a University of Michigan Rackham Faculty Grant, and he was awarded the Literature, Science, and the Arts Ruth Sinclair Award for Freshman-Sophomore Counseling in 1988. Most notably, he received the Literature, Science, and the Arts Excellence in Education Award three years in a row (1992-1994).

The Regents salute this distinguished teacher and scholar by naming Walter S. Gray associate professor emeritus of physics.