Michael Zeller

Henry Ford II Professor of Physics
 

Mike Zeller, B.S. Stanford University, Ph.D. UCLA, Yale faculty member since 1969, you are an international expert in experimental particle physics.  For decades, physicists have tried to answer questions posed by Hubble’s Big Bang Theory of the origin of the universe, positing that all of the world’s energy, condensed into a single point, exploded into the enormous and expanding universe we know today. But while the Big Bang must have produced equal amounts of matter and antimatter, our universe contains only matter. You have been one of those who have devoted a good part of your distinguished career to puzzling over where the antiparticles went. In this service, you were a physicist and an international spokesperson for KOPIO, a matter/antimatter experiment to measure the rate of a rare K-meson decay and to find better clues about the first moments in time. More recently, you have been involved in building detectors for the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, the world’s largest and most advanced particle accelerator ever created, with the ability to collide opposing beams of protons into each other at a speed within one millionth of a percent of the speed of light, You helped create the zero degree calorimeter for the LHC experiments — a part of the ATLAS that worked to detect the particular debris at zero degrees from the beam.

For all of this work, you have been well honored by your profession.  You are an elected fellow of the American Physical Society, where you have Chaired the Division of Particles and Fields; you were a member of the C-11 Commission representing the United States to The 1st International Particle Accelerator Conference and you have been a member of the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel to the Department of Energy.
 
Despite the rigors of your research, and the travel involved in it, you have, since your arrival at Yale, been known as a superb Yale citizen and a spectacular teacher. Over time, you have held every post the Physics department has, including Chairman.  And you have been awarded not one, but both of the highest teaching prizes awarded by Yale College – the William Clyde DeVane Medal for excellence in Teaching and Scholarship and the Yale College Prize for Undergraduate Teaching.

In high school you were a swimmer extraordinarie, elected to the Marin High School Athletic Hall of Fame, and after high school a varsity swimmer at Stanford. There you swam on a team that won the Pacific Coast Conference titles in 1959 and 1960 and you competed three times in the NCAA swimming and diving championships, placing 3rd in 1959 in the 220-yard freestyle. Today you still swim, a familiar figure every day in the Yale pool.  In the past few years you have faced and triumphed over some physical challenges with the courage, fight and spirit that are characteristic of a former varsity athlete in a grueling sport. Now as you retire your colleagues thank you for going the distance and wish you many more happy hours in and out of the pool.

Tribute Editor: Penelope Laurans