Dr. Richard Blankenbecler is a highly regarded physicist specializing in algorithmic science and is the former Head of Theoretical Physics at Stanford University. He is particularly well known in the scientific community for his recent work on light bending in glass.

I was born in the hills of Tennessee, a true hillbilly at heart. After graduating from High school, a friend and I took off hitchhiking for the Midwest. We ended up in De Kalb, IL, for a promised job at a packing plant. Unfortunately, it was a ruse – they only needed field workers, pea pickers, at low wages. That didn't appeal to us so we searched for alternatives. After some thought, we bought some supplies, cut out number stencils and went into the business of painting house numbers on curbs. It took a while to drum up business, but eventually we were doing fine while living in the migrant workers camp. Then a traveling carnival came through town, offered us jobs, and I became a carny. I was a jenny-man, i.e., ran the merry-go-round. We stayed in a small town for a week, packed up, drove for a few hundred miles and started again. We were eventually fired for giving rides to kids without the price of a ride.

That fall, 1950, I started at Miami as physics major. I pledged Pi Kappa Alpha and eventually became a brother. The maturity of the members of the chapter, many were WWII veterans, was an important factor in my choice. I formed a jazz group playing piano and vibes. We played weekends in and around Oxford, Tuesday and Thursday afternoons at Mack and Joes, and had a steady job at a road house in Dayton.

I meet my future wife, Lois Main, on a blind date at Tuffy's. We were married between our junior and senior years. I worked at Armco Steel Corporation in Middletown during this last year – leaving Oxford at noon for the commute.

After we both graduated, class of 1954, we were off to California where I took up graduate study at Stanford and Lois started her teaching career. I spent a year working with Robert Hofstadter who later won the Nobel Prize for his work. In spite of the fact that I am the world's worst experimentalist, I measured the size of the helium nucleus and first proved that the neutron is not a point, but has a finite charge radius. I received my degree as a theoretical physicist in 1958.

I won a National Science Foundation Postgraduate fellowship and went to Princeton University for postgraduate study. I joined the faculty and was awarded tenure 4 years later. Princeton was a wonderful place to teach and to do research. I am very proud of my excellent graduate students that I had through the years and served as their thesis advisor. Many have gone on to important positions in academia at top universities, in the government, and even international banking!

One of my top memories was a Tuesday lunch discussion group that J. R. Oppenheimer organized at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, in his study and on his dime, for a half dozen local theorists. During the period of the 60s, I was invited to join JASON, a scientific advisory group to the government. Certain of their defense activities are described, some even correctly, in the infamous book, the Pentagon Papers. Among the perks as I recall was a protocol rank of general/admiral whenever we visited a military base. Actually the treatment was uncomfortable for the son of a private.

In 1967 we went on sabbatical to the University of California at Santa Barbara and eventually decided to remain on the west coast. I accepted an offer to become a theory professor at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in 1969. I served as the head of the theory group for about 10 years during my 30+ years at SLAC. I retired in 2003 but continue doing research.

My wife Lois died from breast cancer on Xmas, 1990. That was a devastating event. Our two children were a constant support during this period. My daughter lives in the Bay area and tutors children with learning and physical disabilities. My son lives in San Diego and is a fireman/crash expert/bio-warfare expert for the navy. He has 2 sons, presently 5 and 3 years. His wife also tutors children with learning and physical disabilities in the public school system.

I remarried in 2001 to Sharon Coats, a refugee from Minnesota. We are living for the most part in Las Vegas, Nevada, but commute to Stanford often. Sharon telecommutes to her work at SUN Microsystems.

I enjoy solving technical problems and have 8-10 patents most in optics. I recently became interested in medical issues and have a patent on comparing protein structure that has been licensed by a biotech form to use in the search for new drugs. I have been awarded a National Science Foundation and a Sloan Foundation Fellowship. I am an Overseas Fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge, England and a Professeur Etranger at the University of Paris. My top award is an honorary doctorate from Miami University in 1989.

I am a former Fellow of the American Physical Society, a former Associate Editor of The Physical Review Letters, a former Member of the Physics Advisory Board of the National Science Foundation, and a past chairman of the Advisory Board of the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California at Santa Barbara. As you can see, I get fired a lot.

I have consulted for The Institute for Defense Analysis, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Exxon Production Research, Lightpath Optics, Diamond Microelectronics, and Network Physics Inc. I am one of the founders of Acclivity Photonics Inc, a developer and producer of new fiber optic materials for telecommunications.

Hobbies: I continued playing in jazz groups at Stanford and have even taken some courses in musical composition. A few pieces of mine have been played by local amateur orchestras. The warmest compliment that my music has ever received is ‘nonlethal'.

I took up rock climbing while a graduate student at Stanford and have been a member of the American Alpine Club for over thirty years. Some of the new routes that I put up are listed in the Climbers Guide to the High Sierra. At Santa Barbara I was a member of the Los Padres Search and Rescue Team specializing in technical rescues. Some highlights that stand out in my mind are: (1) being struck by lightning immediately upon summiting the Grand Teton via the north face and being unconscious for an hour in 1958 (I no longer glow in the dark), (2) trekking north from Darjeeling, India, towards Everest with Tenzing Norgay (the first to summit Everest) in midwinter 1965, (3) climbing El Capitan in Yosemite Valley (3,000 vertical feet in 2 days) to celebrate my 45 th birthday.