Modern Physics: For Scientists and Engineers

About Chris D. ZafiratosJohn TaylorMichael A. Dubson

John Taylor received his B.A. in math from Cambridge Universityin 1960 and his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Berkeley in 1963. Heis professor emeritus of physics and Presidential Teaching Scholar at theUniversity of Colorado Boulder. He is the author of some 40 articles inresearch journals; a book Classical Mechanics; and three other textbooksone of which An Introduction to Error Analysis has been translatedinto eleven foreign languages. He received a Distinguished ServiceCitation from the American Association of Physics Teachers and wasnamed Colorado Professor of the Year in 1989. His television series Physicsfor Fun won an Emmy Award in 1990. He retired in 2005 and nowlives in Washington D.C.Professor Chris Zafiratos received his B.S. from Lewis &Clark College in 1957 and his Ph.D. from the University of Washingtonin 1962. He was then a postdoctoral fellow at Los Alamos National laboratoryand faculty member at Oregon State University before coming tothe University of Colorado in 1967. His principal research was in nuclearphysics and he was author of over fifty articles and books. He receivedthe Distinguished Alumni Award from Lewis & Clark College as well asnumerous other citations for contributions to his field. He was a fellow ofthe American Physical Society and served in several academic administrativepositions during his tenure at the University of Colorado. He wasalso vice president emeritus for the University of Colorado System whichincludes four campuses as well as professor emeritus of physics. Chrisdied in August in the year 2004.Michael Dubson is a Senior Instructor in the Physics Departmentat the University of Colorado at Boulder where he is Associate Chair forUndergraduate Studies and a member of the Physics Education Researchgroup. He received his B.S. from the University of Illinois (class of 1978)and his Ph.D. from Cornell University (1984). For ten years he workedas a condensed matter experimentalist doing research at Ohio State andMichigan State Universities and winning an NSF Presidential Young InvestigatorAward. In 1995 he switched careers and joined the faculty atBoulder where he has worked on innovative teaching methods and undergraduatecurriculum development. He is the winner of several teachingawards including the 2006 American Association of Physics TeachersAward for Excellence in Undergraduate Education. He is also a softwaredeveloper for PhET (http://phet.colorado.edu) a suite of free interactivesimulations for learning science. His (non-physics) interests include amateurastronomy French literature and biking with his wife Gisele.