Harold Lewis

Harold ("Hal") Warren Lewis (born October 1, 1923 - May 26, 2011) was an Emeritus Professor of Physics and former department chairman at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). In 2010, after 67 years of membership, Lewis resigned from the American Physical Society, writing in a letter about the "corruption" from "the money flood" of government grants.

Career as a physicist

Lewis entered New York University in 1940 and graduated in physics. He earned a masters degree from the University of California, Berkeley from 1943 to 1944 before joining the Navy, where he served in World War II as an electronics technician. After the war, he returned to the University of California, Berkeley, and earned his Ph.D. in Physics studying under J. Robert Oppenheimer. His focus was high energy physics (cosmic rays and elementary particles). He, along with the other theoretical physics professors at Berkeley, refused to sign the McCarthy era loyalty oath on principle, and in 1950 went to Princeton. Later, when offered reinstatement at Berkeley, he chose instead to accept a position at Bell Labs where he did research on superconducting materials. In 1956 he left Bell Labs to join the University of Wisconsin, Madison to work on solid state physics and plasmas. In 1964, he left to join the University of California, Santa Barbara as a full professor, and later chairman, in their growing physics department. He retired from UCSB in 1991.

Harold Lewis (disambiguation)

Harold Lewis was a physicist.

Harold Lewis may also refer to:

See also

Lewis (satellite)

Lewis was an American satellite which was to have been operated by NASA as part of the Small Satellite Technology Initiative. It carried two experimental Earth imaging instruments, and an ultraviolet astronomy payload. Due to a design flaw it failed within three days of reaching orbit, before it became operational.

Lewis was a 288 kilograms (635 lb) spacecraft, which was designed to operate for between one and three years. It was built by TRW under a contract which was signed on 11 July 1994. Its primary instruments were the Hyperspectral Imager, the Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array and the Ultraviolet Cosmic Background experiment. A number of technology demonstration payloads were also flown.

Launch

Lewis was launched by a LMLV-1 (Athena I) rocket flying from Space Launch Complex 6 at the Vandenberg Air Force Base. The launch was originally scheduled to take place in September 1996, but it was delayed due to technical problems affecting the rocket. Launch finally occurred at 06:51:01 GMT on 23 August 1997, and Lewis was successfully placed into a parking orbit with an apogee of 134 kilometres (83 mi), a perigee of 124 kilometres (77 mi), and 97.5 degrees of inclination. Lewis was to have raised itself into a higher orbit, at an altitude of 523 kilometres (325 mi).

Lewis (lifting appliance)

A lewis (sometimes called a lewisson) is one of a category of lifting devices used by stonemasons to lift large stones into place with a crane, chain block, or winch. It is inserted into a specially prepared hole, or seating, in the top of a stone, directly above its centre of mass. It works by applying principles of the lever and utilises the weight of the stone to act on the long lever-arms which in turn results in a very high reaction force and friction where the short lever-arms make contact with the stone inside the hole and thereby prevents slipping.

Etymology

The name lewis may come from the Latin levo -avi, -atum meaning to levitate or lift, but the Oxford English Dictionary Online states, "the formation and the phonology are not easily explained on this hypothesis", preferring "origin obscure", and speculating that the term may derive from a personal name. The Romans used the lewis. The specially shaped hole that is shaped to fit the device is known as a lewis hole. Lewis holes in the uppermost masonry coursings are neatly repaired with matching indented plugs after the stone has been set in place.

Lewis (robot)

Lewis (named after Meriwether Lewis) is an autonomous robot that performs the job of a wedding photographer: it attends social events, moves around, and takes digital photographs of people. It is a research project of the Media and Machines Laboratory at Washington University.

Lewis has been featured on slashdot, on CNN's website, and in various North American newspapers.

In 2002, Lewis received -- and declined -- an invitation to Nelly's 24th birthday party.

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