Today, some very painful news reached me. My father informed me of the death of my undergraduate mentor in physics, Dr. Michael Schmidt. After a long battle with cancer, he passed on November 18. Michael was one of the reasons I survived my time as an undergrad at Yale. Without his patience, guidance, and wisdom, it’s likely my first experience with physics research would have been much less sweet.<\/p>\n
One of my fondest memories was a day of splitting and stacking wood from some trees Michael had cut in his yard. A bunch of us, students and post-docs in his group, drove down from New Haven to Madison to spend the day with a rented wood-splitting machine, avoiding hornet nests in the wood pile and pulling splinters out of our arms. Our labor was rewarded with a great dinner with Michael’s family, including his wife and children. The evening ended with Michael playing the guitar, his son requesting songs and Michael belting them out. I remember most of all his rendition of Green Day’s “Time of your Life”.<\/p>\n
I still pull my undergraduate thesis off the shelf every now and then, wondering at what Michael helped me accomplish in just a year, and wondering more how I ever understood what I was doing back then. I was a stupid, foolish, naive kid who wanted to soak up knowledge and do great research. Michael made sure I stayed on the straight and narrow path, and tried to give me last guidance before I headed off to graduate school. I have had many mentors in my life, and Michael is now the second I have lost who was a great influence on my life in physics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today, some very painful news reached me. My father informed me of the death of my undergraduate mentor in physics, Dr. Michael Schmidt. After a long battle with cancer, he passed on November 18. Michael was one of the reasons I survived my time as an undergrad at Yale. Without his patience, guidance, and wisdom, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7,9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-906","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-life","7":"category-physics","8":"czr-hentry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}