David Halliday
Professor Emeritus
Ph.D., 1941, University of Pittsburgh
Research:
David Halliday has spent the bulk of his career at the University of Pittsburgh: he has been both student and professor, not to mention researcher and administrator. Halliday attended Pitt as both an undergraduate student and a graduate student. During his stay as a graduate student A.G. Worthing, the department chair at the time, gave Halliday the opportunity to be the junior co–author of his book Heat (Wiley, 1948). Halliday received his Ph.D. from Pitt in 1941. With the outbreak of the Second World War, Halliday began working at the MIT Radiation Lab developing radar techniques. In January 1946 he returned to the University of Pittsburgh as an assistant professor. Shortly after his return, Halliday was asked to lecture on the recent resonance experiments performed by Purcell. As Halliday lectured, he realized that something similar would be possible to do with atomic magnetic moments. After acquiring microwave equipment from Alexander Allen and a grant for $5,000 to $10,000, Halliday asked his friend Robert L. Cummerow to work with him as Cummerow's thesis project. After Halliday and Cummerow had their initial results, they heard that Zavoisky, a Russian physicist, had published a paper in 1946 entitled Spin Magnetic Resonance in the Decimetre–Wave Region. Between 1947 and 1949, Halliday would publish five papers on paramagnetic resonance. In 1950, Wiley Published Nuclear Physics, written entirely by Halliday. Nuclear Physics was popular enough for a second edition to be printed in 1955 and to be translated into four languages. In 1951 Halliday became the Department Chair, a position he held until 1962.
During his term as chair Halliday began a collaboration with Dr. Robert Resnick on the book Physics for Students of Science and Engineering. The first edition was published in 1960. Halliday and resnick followed with another, less technical book, Fundamentals of Physics. Today Physics is in its fifth edition and Fundamentals is in its sixth. Both books are availible in about twenty languages. Halliday and Resnick have handed over responsibility of Physics to Ken Krane and Fundamentals to Jearl Walker. David Halliday is still assocaited with the University of Pittsburgh as a professor emeritus, although he is retired and living in Seattle.
During his term as chair Halliday began a collaboration with Dr. Robert Resnick on the book Physics for Students of Science and Engineering. The first edition was published in 1960. Halliday and resnick followed with another, less technical book, Fundamentals of Physics. Today Physics is in its fifth edition and Fundamentals is in its sixth. Both books are availible in about twenty languages. Halliday and Resnick have handed over responsibility of Physics to Ken Krane and Fundamentals to Jearl Walker. David Halliday is still assocaited with the University of Pittsburgh as a professor emeritus, although he is retired and living in Seattle.
Selected Publications
- No papers have been listed.
