The Faculty History Project documents faculty members who have been associated with the University of Michigan since 1837. Key in this effort is to celebrate the intellectual life of the University. This Faculty History Website is intended as a component of the effort to document the extraordinary academic achievements of Michigan’s faculty in building and sustaining one of the world’s great universities. It provides access to a comprehensive database of information concerning the thousands of faculty members who have served the University of Michigan.
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The Bentley Historical Library serves as the official archives for the University.

List of Professors

Name Years at Michigan Positionsort icon

Yaroslav S. Derbenev

1990 - 2001
Visiting Research Scientist, Adjunct Professor of Physics

Lincoln Wolfestein

1970
Visiting Professor of Physics

Theodore H. Berlin

1943 - 1946
Research Associate of Chemistry
Research Physicist Engineering Research Institute
Navy Theoretical Physicist

William Guy Peck

1855 - 1857
Professor/Chair Civil Engineering, Physics 1855-1857

DeVolson Wood

1857 - 1872
Professor/Chair Civil Engineering and Physics 1857-1872

R. Paul Drake

Professor of Space Science & Climate
Professor of Physics

George Palmer Williams

1841 - 1881
Professor of Physics, Mathematics and Languages
Principal of U of M Oakland and Pontiac Branches
Chair of Mathematics and Physics

Neil Hooker Williams

1908 - 1941
Professor of Physics, Mathematics and Languages

John William Langley

1875 - 1889
Professor of Physics, Electrical Engineering, Chemistry and Metallurgy

Leonard M. Sander

1969 - 2015
Professor of Physics and Complex Systems

Robley C. Williams

1935 - 1950
Professor of Physics and Bio Physics
Professor of Astronomy

William L. Williams

1965 - 1986
Professor of Physics and Bio Physics

Steven B. Dierker

1989 - 2006
Professor of Physics and Applied Physics

Alexander Winchell

1853 - 1891
Professor of Physics
Professor/Chair Civil Engineering 1853-1855
Professor Geology, Zoology and Botany 1855-1873

James W. Allen

1987 - 2010
Professor of Physics

Meigan C. Aronson

1990 - 2006
Professor of Physics

Daniel Axelrod

1977 - 2005
Professor of Physics

Ernest F. Barker

1922 - 1956
Professor of Physics
Chair Department of Physics

Michael Bretz

1973 - 2008
Professor of Physics

Philip H. Bucksbaum

1990 - 2006
Professor of Physics
Peter Franken Distinguished University Professor

C. Tristram Coffin

1959 - 1997
Professor of Physics

Walter Francis Colby

1906 - 1950
Professor of Physics

Bruce B. Cork

1968 - 1974
Professor of Physics

James M. Cork

1922 - 1957
Professor of Physics

David M. Dennison

1927 - 1970
Professor of Physics
Chair Department of Physics

Michael J. Duff

1999 - 2005
Professor of Physics

Ora S. Duffendack

1922 - 1943
Professor of Physics

George W. Ford

1958 - 1997
Professor of Physics

Peter A. Franken

1956 - 1973
Professor of Physics

George Gamota

1981 - 1986
Professor of Physics
Director, Institute of Science and Technology

Samuel A. Goudsmit

1927 - 1946
Professor of Physics

Wayne E. Hazen

1947 - 1984
Professor of Physics

Karl T. Hecht

1955 - 1997
Professor of Physics

Alfred Z. Hendel

1958 - 1987
Professor of Physics

Joachim W Janecke

1965 - 1998
Professor of Physics

Lawrence W. Jones

1952 - 1998
Professor of Physics

Samuel Krimm

1952 - 2001
Professor of Physics

Alan D. Krisch

1964 - 2009
Professor of Physics

Otto Laporte

1927 - 1971
Professor of Physics

Robert R. Lewis

1958 - 1992
Professor of Physics

George Allan Lindsay

1913 - 1950
Professor of Physics

W. Wallace McCormick

1947 - 1977
Professor of Physics

Donald I. Meyer

1957 - 1996
Professor of Physics

Oliver E Overseth

1961 - 1992
Professor of Physics

William C. Parkinson

1947 - 1988
Professor of Physics

Harrison McAllister Randall

1901 - 1940
Professor of Physics
Chair Department of Physics

Arthur Rich

1966 - 1990
Professor of Physics

Byron P. Roe

1959 - 2006
Professor of Physics

Marc Ross

1963 - 2001
Professor of Physics

T. Michael Sanders

1963 - 2000
Professor of Physics

Richard H. Sands

1957 - 1994
Professor of Physics

Ralph Alanson Sawyer

1919 - 1965
Professor of Physics
Dean of the Graduate School
Director of the Michigan Memorial Phoenix Project

Daniel Sinclair

1957 - 1996
Professor of Physics

Arthur Whitmore Smith

1903 - 1944
Professor of Physics

Lawrence R. Sulak

1979 - 1986
Professor of Physics

Sir Gordon Brims Black McIvor Sutherland

1949 - 1956
Professor of Physics

Kent M. Terwilliger

1952 - 1989
Professor of Physics

Robert S. Tickle

1960 - 1999
Professor of Physics

George E. Uhlenbeck

1927 - 1935
1939 - 1960
Professor of Physics

John van der Velde

1958 - 1995
Professor of Physics

Martinus J. Veltman

1980 - 1997
Professor of Physics

Gerhard E. Wagner

1987 - 1990
Professor of Physics
Professor of Biological Chemistry

John F. Ward

1967 - 2000
Professor of Physics

Gabriel Weinreich

1960 - 1995
Professor of Physics

Marcellus L Wiedenbeck

1945 - 1986
Professor of Physics

Ralph A. Wolfe

1930
Professor of Physics

Alfred Chi-Tai Wu

1962 - 1999
Professor of Physics

York Peng (Ed) Yao

1966 - 2008
Professor of Physics

Valentine I. Zakharov

1993 - 1998
Professor of Physics

Jens Zorn

1962 - 2009
Professor of Physics

J. Wehrley Chapman

1966 - 2008
Professor of Physics

Dennis J. Hegyi

1975 - 2004
Professor of Physics

Yukio Tomozawa

1966 - 2004
Professor of Physics

Henry Smith Carhart

1889 - 1912
Professor of Physics

Karl Eugen Guthe

1893 - 1900
1909 - 1915
Professor of Physics
Dean of the Graduate Department 1912-1915

William D. Henderson

1903 - 1936
Professor of Physics
Director of University Extension Division

Noah Sherman

1952 - 1978
Professor of Physics

Donald Arthur Glaser

1949 - 1960
Professor of Physics

Joaquin M. Luttinger

1953 - 1958
Professor of Physics

Martin L. Perl

1956 - 1963
Professor of Physics

Robert Wallace Pidd

1944 - 1959
Professor of Physics

Michael J. Longo

1962 - 2008
Professor of Physics

Ernst Katz

1946 - 1979
Professor of Physics

Martin B. Einhorn

1976 - 2004
Professor of Physics

David Noel Williams

1980 - 1999
Professor of Physics

Kenneth Myron Case

1950 - 1968
Professor of Physics

Frederick D. Becchetti

1973 - 2013
Professor of Physics

Rudolf Paul Thun

1974 - 2012
Professor of Physics

David W. Gidley

1982 - 2015
Professor of Physics

Paul R. Berman

1993 - 2016
Professor of Physics

Jean P. Krisch

1974 - 2017
Professor of Physics

Robert Savit

1978 - 2017
Professor of Physics

Katherine Freese

1991 - 2019
Professor of Physics

Gordon L. Kane

1965 - 2019
Professor of Physics

Gregory Tarlé

1984 - 2022
Professor of Physics

H. Richard Crane

1934 - 1978
Professor of Phhysics
Chair of Department of Physics

George Washington Patterson

1889 - 1930
Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics
Junior Professor of Physics

Duncan Steel

1985 - 2023
Professor of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science
Professor of Physics

Stephen C. Rand

1987 - 2020
Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering & Physics

Charles Rogers Doering

1996 - 2021
Professor of Complex Systems

John L. Gland

1988 - 2009
Professor of Chemistry, Physics, Chemical Engineering

Ari Gafni

1983 - 2017
Professor of Biophysics, LSA
Professor of Biological Chemistry, Research Professor, Institute of Gerontology

Homer A. Neal

1987 - 2018
Professor and Chair of Physics 1987-1993
Vice President for Research 1993-1997
Interim President 1996-1997

Oskar Klein

1923 - 1925
Instructor in Physics

Claud Edwin Cleeton

1936
Instructor in Physics

Augustus Trowbridge

1898 - 1901
Instructor in Physics

Lyman F. Morehouse

1902 - 1910
Instructor in Electrical Engineering
Instructor in Physics

Felix Wladyslaw Pawlowski

1914 - 1946
Guggenheim Professor of Aeronautical Engineering
Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, Physics
Chair Aeronautical Engineering 1922-1939

Luming Duan

2006 - 2018
Enrico Fermi Collegiate Professor of Physics
Professor of Physics

John Oren Reed

1892 - 1916
Dean of the Literary Department
Professor of Physics

Ali Maung Thet Lin

1981 - 2003
Associate Research Scientist, Physics

Ralph S Conti

1979 - 2015
Associate Research Scientist, Physics

Richard S. Raymond

1982 - 2009
Associate Research Scientist Emeritus

Mark A. Skalsey

1976 - 2008
Associate Research Scientist & Lecturer in Physics

Boris Y. Dubetsky

1993 - 2002
Associate Research Scientist

Paul E. Phillipson

1961 - 1962
Associate Research Physicist

John Bardwick III

1965 - 1996
Associate Professor of Physics

Floyd Alburn Firestone

1924 - 1945
Associate Professor of Physics

Frank S. Henyey

1969 - 1974
Associate Professor of Physics

Cyrus Levinthal

1950 - 1957
Associate Professor of Physics

Frederick C. MacKintosh

1991 - 2002
Associate Professor of Physics

Charles Ferdinand Meyer

1915 - 1950
Associate Professor of Physics

Christopher R. Monroe

2000 - 2007
Associate Professor of Physics
Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering

A. Lincoln Read

1968 - 1970
Associate Professor of Physics

William Warner Sleator

1918 - 1953
Associate Professor of Physics

Charles Roy Worthington

1961 - 1967
Associate Professor of Physics

Frank E. Rose

1963 - 1994
Associate Professor of Physics

Daniel L. Rich

1908 - 1949
Associate Professor of Physics

Paul Van Campen Hough

1949 - 1962
Associate Professor of Physics

George H Trilling

1956 - 1960
Associate Professor of Physics

Walter S. Gray

1964 - 2002
Associate Professor of Physics

David A. Reis

1999 - 2009
Associate Professor of Physics

Michele Papucci

2013 - 2014
Associate Professor of Physics

Kathryn Zurek

2008 - 2014
Associate Professor of Physics

Richard A. Goldstein

1993 - 2003
Associate Professor of Chemistry
Associate Research Scientist, Academic Program Chair, Biophysics Research Division

Mark A. Saper

1990 - 2021
Associate Professor of Biophysics
Associate Professor of Biological Chemistry

Thomas R. Wright

2001 - 2013
Assistant Research Scientist, Physics

Codrin Nicolae Cionca

1999 - 2014
Assistant Research Scientist in Physics

Jie Pan

2012 - 2015
Assistant Research Scientist in Physics

Charles S Simons

1954 - 1970
Assistant Professor of Radiation Physics

Arthur Adel

1942 - 1948
Assistant Professor of Physics

Esher Ben Jacob

1984 - 1989
Assistant Professor of Physics

Dewitt Bristol Brace

1886
Assistant Professor of Physics

Stephen Fahy

1990 - 1993
Assistant Professor of Physics

Peter R. Fontana

1962 - 1965
Assistant Professor of Physics

Irwin Goldberg

1959
Assistant Professor of Physics

Harvey A. Gould

1967 - 1971
Assistant Professor of Physics

Rombout Hoogerbeets

1988 - 1993
Assistant Professor of Physics

Samuel M. Moukouri

2004 - 2008
Assistant Professor of Physics

C. Thornton Murphy

1964 - 1967
Assistant Professor of Physics

Raulf M. Polichar

1966 - 1974
Assistant Professor of Physics

Jawaid W. Rasul

1988 - 1995
Assistant Professor of Physics

James J. Reidy

1965 - 1971
Assistant Professor of Physics

Alberto G. Rojo

1994 - 2003
Assistant Professor of Physics

Gregory R. Snow

1987 - 1993
Assistant Professor of Physics

Marcus Spradlin

2005 - 2006
Assistant Professor of Physics

Brian E. Springett

1967 - 1970
Assistant Professor of Physics

Robin G. Stuart

1992 - 1999
Assistant Professor of Physics

Herbert M. S. Uberall

1960 - 1962
Assistant Professor of Physics

C. M. Venkatachalam

1970 - 1976
Assistant Professor of Physics

David Locke Webster

1917 - 1919
Assistant Professor of Physics

Carl E. Wieman

1979 - 1984
Assistant Professor of Physics

Thomas Witten Jr

1975 - 1981
Assistant Professor of Physics

Edwin S. Lennox

1949 - 1955
Assistant Professor of Physics

Richard T. Robiscoe

1966 - 1969
Assistant Professor of Physics

William A. Nierenberg

1948 - 1950
Assistant Professor of Physics

Donald Allen Gilbert

1957 - 1958
Assistant Professor of Physics

Murray Slotnick

1950 - 1951
Assistant Professor of Physics

Robert N. Cahn

1976 - 1978
Assistant Professor of Physics

Paul R Chagnon

1955 - 1961
Assistant Professor of Physics

Stuart Field

1994 - 1997
Assistant Professor of Physics

Alexei V. Tkachenko

2001 - 2009
Assistant Professor of Physics

Aaron Edward Leanhardt

2007 - 2014
Assistant Professor of Physics

Charles Kasson Wead

1877 - 1885
Acting Professor of Physics