Peter A. Beckman
Marion Reilly Professor of Physics
Peter Beckmann was born and raised in New Westminster, near Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He did his B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. in the Physics Department at the University of British Columbia. His principal thesis work involved using gas phase nuclear magnetic resonance relaxation techniques to better understand the rotational structure of the methane molecule and the effects of collisions. He did a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Nottingham, England where he studied the quantum mechanical tunneling of intramolecular atomic groups at low temperatures using electron spin and nuclear spin relaxation techniques. He joined the Physics Department at Bryn Mawr College in 1977. Bryn Mawr is in the western suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He uses theoretical, computational and experimental techniques to study structure and motion in solids. The experimental technique used is solid state nuclear spin-lattice relaxation. Current projects at Bryn Mawr involve proton (H-1) and fluorine (F-19) relaxation in a variety of aromatic molecular solids to learn about the motion of parts of molecules. He collaborates with scientists at several universities around the world; the University of Delaware, Villanova University, the University of California at San Diego and the University of Dortmund among them. He is also involved in curricular development at Bryn Mawr. On one hand he is integrating modern technology and twenty first-century physics into the physics curriculum and on the other hand he is developing integrated liberal arts courses that span many of the traditional disciplines in the natural sciences and the humanities.
E-mail:pbeckman@brynmawr.edu
Office: Park Science Center, rm. 344
Telephone: (610) 526 - 5634
Fax: (610) 526 - 7469
