Bob, so far. A scientific biography of Robert A. Harris

Abstract

“I am an American, Chicago born – Chicago, that somber city – and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent.”

Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March

Robert A. Harris**

Acknowledgement

I thank Bob and Christine Harris, Bob Silbey, Stuart Rice, and Fritz Schaefer for helpful advice; and Bob Harris and Julie Seeley for their quoted comments. Supported in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation.

Notes

†There were also some closely held family secrets, of which Bob was unaware until recently: I. Damaskin with G. Elliott, Kitty Harris: The Spy with Seventeen Names (St Ermin's Press, London, 2001).

‡For example, see 10 on the list of Bob's publications. All citation numbers in this article refer to that list.

**Photo by Peg Skorpinski

§See below for Bob's own recollections of his childhood, early scientific experiences, and education.

¶Those lectures later formed part of the basis for the celebrated book, Atoms and Molecules, which Karplus co-authored with Richard Porter.

†Bob and Christine have three children, Diana, Juliet and Katherine.

‡Bob mentions Volume III of that series–-with its conceptual rather than historical approach to quantum mechanics, building on the fundamental idea of linear superposition and interference as exhibited in multiple-slit experiments–-as the book that most strongly influenced his own teaching of the subject.

†Except for an earlier, short paper with Andrew McLachlan on Mayer's maximum-entropy ensembles 5.

†The first-in-line of this second generation of graduate-student collaborators, upon joining Harris's ‘group’, I heard the observation, ‘Lightning strikes twice in the same place!’ from a fellow chemistry student, based on our apocryphal belief that Bob had previously supervised only one PhD student. In addition to working with Schneider and Dancz, Bob supported and served as the nominal PhD advisor for John Morgan III in the middle seventies. Morgan was a highly independent student who actually worked with mathematical physicist Barry Simon at Princeton.

†See the comments below from Julie Seeley, who earned her PhD in 2004 and worked with Alex Pines.

†Only Bob's love of art and music rival his commitment to science. He has studied piano for many years, for his own enjoyment. His teacher for several years was John Hearst's mother, Lily, with whom he had weekly lessons until shortly before her death in 2004 at the age of 107.