Rossman receives Feynman Prize

George Rossman, professor of mineralogy and the divisional academic officer for Geological and Planetary Sciences, has been awarded the 2003–04 Richard P. Feynman Prize for Excellence in Teaching. Acting provost Ed Stolper presented him with the award at the February 23 faculty meeting.

The prize committee’s recommenda-tion of Rossman reads in part: “George Rossman has been teaching with enthusiasm and with superb results since he joined the Caltech faculty in 1971 . . . George’s style of teaching exploits the beautiful and beguiling qualities of minerals and their relationships to geological processes. He employs a series of mind-stretching demonstrations . . . He tells stories about minerals. He asks probing questions about their color, and then leads students to think in general about the proper approach to scientific questions. [His] courses . . . evolve each year, in the best tradition of didactic innovation.”

The citation also notes Rossman’s part in introducing and funding field trips to such places as Alaska, Greece, Turkey, South Africa, and Brazil that would otherwise not be easily accessible to students, and that “‘Best professor at Caltech,’ or ‘Best mentor at Caltech,’ is a frequent distinction applied to George.”

Made possible by an endowment from Ione and Robert E. Paradise and contributions from Mr. and Mrs. William H. Hurt, the Feynman Prize—a cash award of $3,500 and an equivalent raise in the winner’s salary—is awarded each year to a professor who demonstrates “unusual ability, creativity, and innovation in undergraduate and graduate classroom or laboratory teaching.”

Rossman, whose courses include Ge 10 (Frontiers in Geological and Planetary Sciences), Ge 114 (Mineralogy), and Ge 214 (Spectroscopy of Minerals), says, “Getting this prize is something I very much appreciate. I very much enjoy teaching and find the topic interesting, so it’s easy to get excited.” Adding to that excitement are Caltech’s high-caliber students, who he says “are vibrant . . . never let you stagnate. They are very positively stimulating.”

He finds minerals themselves “intrinsically interesting” because their study crosses such fields as chemistry, solid-state physics, materials science, industrial technology, and earth history, even “into the realm of anthropology, archaeology, and pigments in art. Minerals are intimately intertwined in almost all aspects of human history and science as we understand them.”

Calling his fascination with minerals “an avocation as well as a profession,” Rossman says it all began in grade school when a friend gave him some beautifully colored mineral samples. “Some were like glass,” he recalls, “and I wondered, how could minerals be so clear and transparent? I asked my teachers questions, and needless to say, they didn’t give very satisfactory answers.” So he decided to seek answers on his own, and, still in grade school, he set up a lab in his parents’ basement. There he learned to make his own chemicals, also receiving some donated by a local college, and used them to study his beloved minerals.

After receiving his BS from Wisconsin State University in 1966, he came to Caltech as a graduate student under Harry Gray, to whom Rossman gives “a lot of credit” in inspiring him to teach more creatively. “[Gray] put me into an interesting TA [teaching assistant] position of organizing and presenting demonstrations to the Chem 1 class. I would watch him trying to get students excited about the field, and not just stuffing information into their brains.”

In 1971, Rossman earned his PhD, joined the Caltech faculty as an instructor, and quickly became an assistant professor. He rose to associate professor in 1977 and full professor in 1983. Since 1999, he has served as academic officer for the division, and in 2001 he was awarded the Dana Medal by the Mineralogical Society of America.
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