I just saw on the Physics Today obituary notices that Phil Saffman, one of my Caltech professors, died on August 17th. Here is the Los Angeles Times obituary.
As some of you probably know, AMa 95 was essentially created by Phil Saffman. (In fact, I have my copy of the Saffman lecture notes in my office and I still refer to them on occasion when teaching relevant material.) So in this way, he impacted a lot of Caltech undergrads (though given the level of popularity of that class, I suppose many wished he hadn't). I had Saffman for AMa 101 during my junior year (1996-97). This was the last class he taught at Tech, and he specifically decided he wanted to end his classroom lecturing career with that course (which he had previously taught 20 years ago). So he was the first person who showed me things like steepest descents, WKB theory, multiple scales, hypergeometric functions, etc. On the last day of class, he very quietly said he was retiring and had specifically decided to end with that class. (I had been wondering why his TAs and random people---including his daughter---were in the audience.) That remains the one time I have ever seen champaign in a classroom, and I remember we all had a laugh after one of his TAs accidently fell backwards into her chair after taking her first sip. (There were comments about how little alcohol she could handle.)
Anyway, so while I didn't know Saffman that well, I do have some memories of him and definitely was influenced by him to some degree academically through AMa 95 (intro methods in applied math, for non-Techers; this was a one-year course) and AMa 101 (methods in applied math; this was also a one-year course).
Hi Mason, I enjoyed your comments about Philip's last class. I hadn't heard those anecdotes. By the way, looking at your blog, I see you were a Vin Scully fanatic. You
ReplyDeletemight like to know that Philip was also a great enjoyer of Vin Scully. There was nothing he liked better on a hot summer Sunday afternoon, than taking a nap to the tune of Vin Scully calling the ballgame.
Mark: Thanks for coming over here. I wanted to contribute what little I could when I saw the notice at Physics Today and my experience that day seemed right in line with the more global descriptions already reported.
ReplyDeleteI never had Prof. Saffman as an instructor as I was a freshman that year that he last taught, but I do have "the Saffman notes" still, also. That's definitely one of the classes from 'Tech that I'd like to have another go at.
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