University Times

Julia Ann Thompson, professor of physics, 61, died in an automobile accident in Wood River, IL, on Aug. 16, 2004.

She always had a mix of student papers and research papers with her in the hallways. And she wore her hair in pigtails for ease and efficiency, said one former student.

According to colleagues and students, Thompson wanted to see physics come to life, not just in her research, but also in her teaching and outreach to women and other minorities.

A graduate of Cornell College in Iowa and Yale University, she joined Pitt’s Department of Physics and Astronomy faculty in 1972, specializing in experimental elementary particle physics.

“One of her goals was to get diversity involved in science – she was an awesome instructor and awesome mentor,” said Nichelle Madison, 20, a Pitt senior majoring in physics, math, and political science.

Madison traveled with Thompson to perform physics demonstrations for underprivileged students in the Capetown area of South Africa in the summer of 2003.

Madison and Thompson used simple props like tuning forks and Slinkys for their road show of physics demonstrations. “Students didn’t want to go lunch, they stayed,” Madison said. So did the Slinkys and other props, which were greatly desired by the South African teachers after the demonstrations.

While in Africa, Thompson would drive Madison and another student to two schools a day, leaving at sunrise and finishing the day at sunset. “Then she would cook for us,” Madison remembered. “We didn’t go to restaurants that much — this wasn’t a vacation to her. She had a work ethic that was through the roof.”

Thompson founded and directed the REUP–FOM (Research Experiences for Undergraduates in Physics — Focus on Minorities), a summer program at Pitt for students from inside and outside of the university. The program placed undergraduate students in research groups during the summer months. Supported by the National Science Foundation, REUP–FOM achieved a minority participation of 60 to 80 percent. More than half the students in the program were females. In 2001 and 2002 she directed a sister site of this program at Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville.

One of Thompson’s colleagues in the physics department, Wilfred Cleland, professor emeritus, remembers when she started the REUP program about a decade ago. “She believed. She was passionate. She wasn’t doing it out of some sense of duty. She wanted to make life better for the disadvantaged. It was public service with a capital ‘P,'” Cleland said. In addition, Thompson was a brilliant teacher and researcher, he said.

Cleland worked with Thompson on collaboration projects with as many as 300 scholars in a group. “Everybody had their specialty and did their particular part of the experiment. Her area was data analysis. She would take analysis, run through computer programs and reduce it into meaningful results. This is what she liked to do. Everybody had to do some fraction of this for his or her thesis. She was very careful, very methodical – it was work requiring you not to make mistakes.”

During her career she participated in experiments at several particle accelerator laboratories: Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, NY, CERN in Geneva, Switzerland and the Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics in Novosibirsk, Russia. Recently she had begun work on an experiment at Fermilab in Batavia, IL. Over the years she worked with several international collaborations, ranging in size from a few physicists to several hundred. She made contributions to many of the important topics in experimental particle physics, published more than 100 scientific papers, and was a frequent speaker at international conferences.

In 2003, she was appointed adjunct professor of physics at the University of Missouri at St. Louis, from where she initiated physics outreach activities to the local high schools. This work is carried out as part of the Quark Net program, a national effort with the goal to make elementary particle physics accessible to high school teachers and students all across the United States. Her experimental research at Pitt provided access to the Quark Net program.

Thompson is survived her husband, David E. Kraus, formerly a researcher at Pitt. Kraus was also injured in the car crash. Other survivors include her parents, Erwin and Ruth Thompson, of Godfrey, Ill., and two children, Diane Thompson, also of Godfrey, and Vincent Szewczyk, of Barnhart, Mo.

A memorial service at the University is being planned.