Robert Weinstock Papers

Robert Weinstock was born to Morris and Lillian Hirsch Weinstock on February 2, 1919, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He received his undergraduate degree in physics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1940. His experience as a physics instructor began in January 1943, when he taught lecture courses for civilian students at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, while working on his Ph.D. thesis. After receiving the PhD from Stanford in June 1943, he remained an instructor there through the first quarter of 1944. From the west coast, he moved on to the Radio Research Laboratory at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he worked on radar countermeasures throughout 1945.

After a brief tour with the U.S. Merchant Marines from January to September 1946, Weinstock returned to Stanford University. There he agreed to help alleviate a shortage of math teachers for only a single term. Though he was not awarded tenure, he taught in the Department of Mathematics at Stanford until the summer of 1954. For the next five years, he taught in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, and he was granted tenure after the fourth year.

Robert Weinstock filled a sabbatical-replacement position in mathematics at Oberlin College during the academic year 1959-1960. During that first year in Oberlin, he developed a strong desire to stay, but no opening existed in the Department of Mathematics. However, when esteemed Professor of Physics Forest G. Tucker retired in June 1960, Weinstock was offered a two year appointment in the Department of Physics. He joined the Department on July 1, 1960 and was recommended for a permanent appointment in November 1961. At the time of his appointment the Department consisted of David L. Anderson, Thurston Manning, and Carl Ellis Howe.

During his years at Oberlin College, Robert Weinstock taught nearly every basic undergraduate physics course. In addition to a heavy load of elementary courses, he ordinarily taught an advanced course in theoretical mechanics or electromagnetic theory each semester. Special reading course students and honors students regularly enrolled in his classes. Weinstock was looked upon by his peers as a talented theoretical physicist and an unassuming but highly motivated, energetic and creative individual. He was an effective and demanding educator who devoted a considerable amount of time and thought to his instructional methods and was attentive to the needs of individual students. He was professionally active, presenting numerous papers at American Association of Physics Teachers national meetings, and publishing papers and book reviews in various physics journals.

While on sabbatical leave in the Department of Theoretical Physics at Oxford University, England, in 1965-1966, he worked on a derivation of the Maxwell-Boltzmann, Bose-Einstein, and Fermi-Dirac distribution formulas by means of the fundamental Darwin-Fowler formulation. To advance his scholarly work, he used only undergraduate-level multivariate calculus and avoided the multivariable analytic function theory employed by Charles Galton Darwin (d. 1962) and Ralph Howard Fowler (d. 1944).The results appeared in the American Journal of Physics of August 1967 under the title "New Approach to Statistical Mechanics.” Weinstock later referred to this undertaking as "the most satisfying piece of work" he had ever accomplished. He participated in a 1967 visiting scientists program sponsored by the American Association of Physics Teachers and the American Institute of Physics and underwritten by the National Science Foundation intended to foster interest in physics and physics education. Around 1978, his work with low-temperature theorist James C. Rainwater gave rise to controversy regarding Newton's Principia. A referee put forth that their geometric solution of the inverse-square orbit problem had already been used in the Principia. Careful reexamination convinced Weinstock that Newton's proof that inverse-square force implies conic-section orbit rests on an invalid argument.

In 1977, his position at Oberlin was reduced to the teaching of a single year-long applicable mathematics course. He accepted an early retirement plan and became Emeritus Professor in 1983, but continued to teach the applicable math course for many years without remuneration. His fifty-year career as an instructor formally ended after 1989-1990. On April 22, 1950, Weinstock married Stanford mathematics graduate, Elizabeth (known to all as Betty) W. Brownell (b. 1927). Two sons, Frank and Robert, were born to this marriage.

Robert Weinstock died at his home on Tuesday, May 16, 2006, at the age of 87. Family members attributed his death to heart complications.

Sources Consulted

"An account of the professional career of Robert Weinstock...as reported in February 1997 to Professor Paul A. Heiney, Department of Physics, U. of P."

Ganzel, Carol. 1984. "Emeritus Professor Weinstock continues teaching." The Observer (February 2), 3.

Faculty file of Robert Weinstock, Development and Alumni Records, 28/3.