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Lehigh University
16 Memorial Dr. East
Bethlehem, PA 18015
610-758-3908
Email: rtf1@lehigh.edu
Robert T. Folk enrolled in Lehigh University in September, 1949, after a three-year enlistment in the U.S. Air Force, where he was a member of a B29 bomber group. He left Lehigh in August, 1957, after completing the requirements for a B.S. degree in E.E. (June, 1953), a B.S., M.S., and a Ph.D. in physics (June 1954, 1955, 1958). During the three years he was in graduate school, he held a National Science Foundation Pre-Doctoral Fellowship. He joined the faculty of the Physics Department of Princeton University in September, 1957. After teaching for two years at Princeton University , he received a Post-Doctoral Fellowship from the National Science Foundation for research at the Institut fuer Theoretische Physik, Heidelberg , Germany , for the 1959-60 school year, where he worked with Hans Jensen, who later received the Nobel Prize in physics. He returned to Princeton for one more year, and after a summer with the Physics Division of Argonne National Laboratories, he joined the Lehigh Faculty as an Assistant Professor in September, 1961. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1963 and to Professor in 1966. He had summer appointments to the Physics Division of The Oak Ridge National Laboratories 1963 and 1964.
His research has been in two areas, nuclear theory and the theory of elastodynamics and fluid dynamics. Besides his own research, he has directed the research of undergraduate and graduate students leading to six Ph.D.'s and many masters degrees. He has served on the Ph.D. committees of about 50 students in physics and engineering. His nuclear research was sponsored by the Atomic Energy Commission and the National Science Foundation from 1957 to 1970.
He has taught most of the undergraduate and graduate subjects in physics. For about twenty-five semesters, he gave the lectures in freshmen physics to an average of 700 students per year. For the past thirteen years, he has been the lecturer in one of the basic physics courses taken by several hundred students per semester. In addition, for the past nineteen years, he has been in charge of the sophomore physics laboratory course, taken by about 500 students a year. Also, for twenty-five years he taught a two-semester graduate course on mathematical physics to many science and engineering students. He is a recipient of teaching awards from the Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback
Foundation and from the student honorary society, Tau Beta Pi. Since 1957, he has taught physics to about 25,000 undergraduate and graduate students
In his current research, he is developing a general method of solving the pure-end-condition boundary value problems of elastodynamics and linear fluid dynamics. In other work, he is constructing a quark model of protons and neutrons that agrees with all the experimental data now available.
Among his publications listed on the next two pages is an 800-page text book on physics for scientists and engineers written with Shelden Radin.
Publications by Robert Folk:
• "Solutions to time-dependent pure-end condition problems of elasticity: Pressure-step wave propagation and end-resonance effects," with Irwin Goldberg; SIAM Journal of Applied Mathematics 53 , 1264-1292, (1993).
• Book : Physics for Scientists and Engineers , second edition, with Shelden Radin, Ginn Press, Needham Heights , MA , 1990.
• "Orthogonality condition for the Pochhammer-Cree modes," with Andrzej Herczynski, Quarterly Journal of Applied Math 42, 523-536, (1989).
• "Solutions for steady and nonsteady entrance flow in a semi-infinite circular tube at very low Reynolds numbers," with Irwin Goldberg, SIAM Journal of Applied Mathematics 48 , 770-791, (1988).
• "Solutions of elastodynamic slab problems using a new orthogonality condition," with Andrzej Herczynski, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 80 , 1103-1110, (1986).
• Book : Physics for Scientists and Engineers , with Shelden Radin, Prentice Hall, Inc., Englewoods Cliffs , New Jersey , 1982.
• "Two-body equations for four-nucleon problems," with Peter Van Dyke, Physical Review 178 , 1537-1542, (1969).
• "Independent-pair wave functions for the three and four- body nuclei," Nuclear Physics A/22 , 353-372, (1968).
• "Coulomb energy of H 3 and He 3 ," Physics Letters 28B , 159-160, (1968).
• "An improved independent-pair method for few-nucleon problems," Nuclear Physics 85 , 449-460, (1966).
• "The few nucleon problems with velocity-dependent potentials," with E. Bonnem , Nuclear Physics 63 , 513-519, (1965).
• "Binding energies of light hyperfragments," with K. Dietrich and H.J. Mang, Nuclear Physics 50 , 177-201, (1964).
• "Binding energies of light hyperfragments," with H.J. Mang and K. Dietrich, Proceedings of the Rutherford Jubilee International Conference (Heywood and Co., London, p. 165, 1961).
• "Doublet splittings in nuclei and strongly correlated nuclear wavefunctions," with J. Sawicki, Nuclear Physics 11 , 368-386, (1959).
• "Elastic strain produced by sudden application of pressure to one end of a cylindrical bar," with C.W. Curtis, G. Fox, and C.A. Shook, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 30 , 552-558, (1958).
• "A pair wavefunction approximation for the alpha particle," Bulletin of the American Physical Society 13 , 627, (1968).
• "Form factors of 3 H and 3 He," Bulletin of the American Physical Society 12 , 575, (1967).
• "Improved independent-pair method for few-nucleon problems," Bulletin of the American Physical Society 10 , 112, (1965).
• "Accuracy of the Mang-Wild method for a 3-nucleon problems," Bulletin of the American Physical Society 8 , 56, 1963).
• "Analysis of the light L -hypernuclei systems," with Mang and Dietrich, Bulletin of the American Physical Society 6 , 33, (1961).
• "Doublet splitting in strongly correlated nuclei," with J. Sawicki, Bulletin of the American Physical Society 4 , 58, (1959).
• "Review of elastic waves propagation in rods of arbitrary cross section," Journal of Applied Mechanics, Transactions, American Society of Mechanical Engineers 33 , 476, (1966).
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