Barbara Whitten

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Barbara Lu Whitten (also published as Barbara Lu Whitten Wolfe) is a retired American physics educator and professor emerita of physics at Colorado College. [1] She is known for encouraging women in physics, for studying the factors that lead to the success of women in physics, and for promoting inclusive teaching strategies in physics; she has also worked in computational environmental physics. [2]

Contents

Education and career

Whitten "fell madly in love" with physics at age 16, [3] and graduated from Carleton College in 1968. [1] She received a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Rochester in 1977, [3] with the dissertation On Mechanical Quantum Measuring Processes, supervised by Gérard G. Emch. [4] Her doctoral research applied algebraic statistical mechanics to computational atomic physics, [3] [1] a combination of topics she continued to study for many years. [3]

After teaching at Miami University and working as a researcher at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, [2] she joined the Physics Department at Colorado College as the first woman in its faculty. She retired in 2017. [1]

Recognition

Whitten is the 2018 recipient of the Oersted Medal of the American Association of Physics Teachers. [2]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Celebrating Physics and Professor Barbara Whitten at Physics Homecoming, Colorado College, May 10, 2017, retrieved 2024-12-06
  2. 1 2 3 Barbara L. Whitten to Receive AAPT 2018 Oersted Medal, American Association of Physics Teachers, October 3, 2017, retrieved 2024-12-06
  3. 1 2 3 4 Valich, Lindsey (Spring 2018), "Making physics less alpha: Barbara Whitten '77 (PhD) has devoted her career to the study of physics— and how to attract and retain women in the discipline", Rochester Review, University of Rochester, retrieved 2024-12-06
  4. ↑ Barbara Whitten at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
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