Lee Wilcox, Professor of Physics at Stony Brook, died after a long struggle with emphysema, in May, 1995. Dr. Wilcox received his bachelor's degree (with honors), and his Master's degree from the University of Chicago in 1949 and 1951 respectively. He then went to Stanford, working under Willis Lamb on refined measurements of the "Lamb shift", where he received his Ph.D. in 1957. From 1958 to 1960, he was a Research Associate under Nicholaas Bloembergen at Harvard. Lee then taught at the American University in Beirut, Lebanon, between 1961 and 1964, and returned to the U.S. as a great enthusiast of eastern Mediterranean life and culture. After four years (1964-68) as a n Associate Professor in Columbia University's Physics Department , Lee came to Stony Brook as Professor of Physics, where he expanded and elaborated on research he first started at Columbia, where he had invented an early application of laser technology to the study of critical phase transitions. He and his students developed methods of unprecedented exactness and elegance, based on laser interferometry, to study phase transitions near the critical temperature-pressure point in liquid-vapor transitions. Analysis of the very large data files generated from these studies attracted Lee's interests to early problems of data display and assimilation using computers. He became an early enthusiast for the pioneering studies of Bela Julesz at Bell Labs, wherein three dimensional representations can be mentally generated, by practiced viewers, from what appear to be nothing more than jumbled and vague patterns of pixels on a flat surface. He also came to believe that what he saw as the coming revolution in computer power and speed would have a profound impact not only in science but in people's everyday lives. He believed that how we view problems certainly shapes how we program computers to solve those problems, but even more importantly, that our choice of programming languages in turn shapes how we think about - and choose - the problems we solve. This led him to become a passionate advocate for APL, (a now all-but-forgotten language in the battles to develop more computationally suitable languages for mathematics and the physical sciences), and a passionate spokesman for computer literacy for undergraduate and graduate students.. As an idiosyncratic thinker, Lee's approaches to problems were often puzzling or obscure to colleagues and students alike, but always worth listening to for their cleverness and novelty of insight. He was an impassioned teacher, who believed in the highest standards of rigorous thinking and experimental integrity, but unfortunately the misfit with the aspirations and thinking habits of students in his undergraduate courses was sometimes painful. As a graduate level teacher, both in the classroom, and particularly with his own students in his laboratory, the effect was a much happier one. Lee also believed that rigor and exactitude in physics had to be tempered with relaxation involving good company, good food, and good drink. When the Department was smaller and more intimate, almost all faculty and graduate students could be found at Lee's house for party evenings two or three times a year. His friends and colleagues at Stony Brook and elsewhere miss his stimulating presence.

Former Faculty Homepage