Re: Ernest Rising

[Bernard L Cohen <blc+@pitt.edu>]

On Fri, 9 Feb 2001, Somerville, Mark wrote:
> 
> My question, especially to Dr. Cohen is:  What does Ernest really do?
> He gets his credibility by being a professor of physics at the University of
> Pittsburgh.
> I went to Pitt.  That's where I got my masters degree with Gur, and Watson,
> and Wald and the like.  I never saw Sternglass there, and believe me I
> looked.  I never had a class with him.  

	--Sternglas was never a professor of Physics at Pitt. He
apparently did some good work on X-ray image intensifiers 
 at Westinghouse during the 1950s (and also some very bad work in particle
physics). The medical X-ray group at Pitt wanted to hire him, but the
Physics Dept. tried to stop it. The compromise was that he would give his
address as Medical School, Univ. of Pittsburgh. He did teach a few courses
in radiation health. By the late 1970s, everyone realized his obnoxious
behavior and they tried to get rid of him. They arranged to do this by
giving him early retirement with one full year of full pay as a bonus. He
then left Pittsburgh, moving to Indiana where his wife had a job. He made
money with his anti-nuclear activities until they both retired and moved
back to Pittsburgh in about 1996. I saw him once after that and he told me
that he was going to work in Astronomy, but I gather that he has gone back
to his old tricks.

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