David H. Douglass

Academic Degrees

• B.S. University of Maine
• Ph. D. MIT

Employment

• University of Rochester: Professor, 1969 - present
• University of Chicago: Assistant; Associate Prorfessor
• MIT: Instructor
• MIT Lincoln Laboratories: staff scientist

Awards and Honors

• Alfred P. Sloan Award (junior) 4 years
• Alfred P. Sloan Award (senior)
• Fellow of American Physical Society
• Bridging Fellowship to the Eastman School of Music

Research

Prof. Douglass interests have been in the general area of Experimental Condensed Matter Physics. His work has involved experiments in the areas of liquid helium and superconductivity (both low temperature and high temperature). Significant contributions have also been made in the field of gravitational wave detectors. Prof. Douglass has also worked on chaos and frequency drifts of spectral lines of extended sources.

His interests for the last several years are on climate change, in particular with the fundamental science issues underlying "global warming." See recent publications.

Current Courses

PHY 100 Nature of the Physical World (Spring 2008). This is an introductory course designed especially for students in the humanities and other non-scientific fields who are interested in learning something about the physical world. There are no prerequisites, no background knowledge is required and the material will be presented with very little mathematics. Substantial use will be made of demonstrations. Topics include the scale of the universe from galaxies to atoms and quarks; the fundamental forces of nature, motion and relativity, energy, electromagnetism and its everyday applications, the structure of matter, atoms, light and quantum mechanics.