|
UM Names Physics Building For John Toll
 In a practice hearkening to grand, old university traditions, the University of Maryland, College Park renamed its physics building in honor of Washington College President John Toll during a ceremony held in early May. The gesture acknowledges Dr. Toll's important contributions as the former physics department chair at Maryland and as former president and chancellor of the University of Maryland System (now the University System of Maryland).
"In baseball, Yankee Stadium is rightly known as 'The house that Ruth built.' In the same way, our department should be known as the 'The department that Toll built'," said physics department chair Jordan A. Goodman during the ceremony.
After earning a B.S. degree with highest honors in physics from Yale in 1944, Toll served in the Navy during WWII. In 1952 he completed his Ph.D. in physics at Princeton, where he helped establish what is now the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. In 1953 he became chair of Maryland's physics department, which was broadened to create the astronomy program. Thirteen years later he left to take over the presidency of the State University of New York at Stony Brook. In 1978 he returned, first as President and later as Chancellor of the expanded University of Maryland system.
Toll was a Guggenheim Fellow, has held leadership roles in dozens of organizations, and has received national and international honors and honorary degrees. He pioneered the establishment of relations between the State of Maryland and China as one of the first university presidents to visit China in the 1970s.
In physics he is recognized as a leader in developing the modern approach to dispersion theory and its application to problems on elementary particle physics. Upon Toll's leaving the Chancellor's Office in 1989 and returning to the Department of Physics, the Board of Regents conferred upon him the status of Chancellor Emeritus. In addition to his presidential duties at Washington College, he also serves as a part-time physics faculty member in the University of Maryland's College of Computer, Mathematical and Physical Sciences.
Last year Toll also was chosen as the distinguished Marylander for the Year 2000 by the University of Maryland chapter of the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society.
|
