Physics at UCSB

Thinking about college?

Go to UCSB

I went there from 1973 to 1979. It is the most beautiful place I've ever been in my whole life. I was 23 when I got there, it was Paradise.

Of course you have to factor the fact that I was coming from Mexico City, not the most livable place in the world, (it is better now, though).

Besides that definite plus, there were the most beautiful people there; I married one.

Most important though, was the class of people in the Physics Department. First rate people, and first rate scientists. The "gang of four" (in reference to Mao Tse Tung's widow and her gang), Dr. Douglas Scalapino, Dr. James Hartle, Dr. Raymond Sawyer, and Dr. Robert Sugar (my advisor), won a competition by the National Science Foundation to establish a Theoretical Physics Institute. Five million dollars over five years. As they say, the rest is history.

When I left campus in 1979, the first high caliber recruits were coming in, Prof. Robert Schriefer of Superconductivity fame. I talked with him once in the elevator when I went back in the early eighties, also Professor Walter Kohn , got there around that time. I could go on and on and on.

Just a last comment about my ending up at UCSB. Professor Richard Blankenbecler went to CINVESTAV-IPN in Mexico City to teach a summer school course. I was finishing my studies for the M.Sc. degree in physics there. I wanted a recommendation letter to go to Stanford University; by the time I talked with him though, I had received a letter from Stanford telling me to get the Engineering Degree I was about to get at ESIME-IPN. I was young and in a hurry, so when Prof. Blankenbecler told me that it was not too late to apply to two very good physics departments, that were not very famous, the first at the University of Washington at Seattle, and the second at the University of California at Santa Barbara, I seized the opportunity.

Back then UCSB was known as a beach party school, which was not bad, but would have not drawn my attention really. I took the advice, it was very prescient of him to know that those two physics departments were going to be as good as they became.

Now it is not that hard to choose UCSB for an undergraduate or graduate education in Physics. I just want to put my little five cents worth piece of advice. Go to UCSB! Go Gauchos!

BTW. Professor Alexei Vladimir Filippenko  got his B.Sc., and  Alan Boss, got his Ph.D. degree in Physics there.