Best professor you've ever had and why

Rivet2000
Sun, 06 Aug 2017 18:55:27 +0000

The best professor I ever had was physics professor, John Archibald Wheeler (in the mid 1980’s). This man was a legend in physics having worked on the Manhattan Project and Project Matterhorn. What made him so memorable is that as director of the theoretical physics department, he regularly taught freshman and sophomore physics classes! On the first day of class this elder professor (in his 70’s) walked into the lecture hall of over 200 and worked the room like a rock star.

On the last day of class, he mesmerized us with stories of his work in describing hypothetical “tunnels” in space-time (wormholes) and conversations with greats like Albert Einstein. Then he told us a story that I remember even today. I’m not sure where he got the story from but it went something like this:

A young graduate student, trying to impress his math professor, tells the professor – “But isn’t the sky above us nothing more than a random distribution of points that can be completely described by mathematics?” Whereupon the professor slowly shakes his head, turns, and says, “No, the sky is blue, and birds fly in it”.

For a moment, you could hear a pin drop in that auditorium. Followed by a thunderous standing ovation.