Robert Weinstock Papers, 1937-2004
| Oberlin College Archives
Arrangement
Administrative/Biographical History
Robert Weinstock was born to Morris and Lillian Hirsch Weinstock on February 2, 1919 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He received his undergraduate degree in physics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1940. His experience as a physics instructor began in January 1943, when he taught lecture courses for civilian students at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, while working on his Ph.D. thesis. After receiving the Ph.D. from Stanford in June 1943, he remained an instructor there through the first quarter of 1944. From the west coast, he moved on to the Radio Research Laboratory at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he worked on radar countermeasures throughout 1945.
After a brief tour with the U.S. Merchant Marines from January to September 1946, Weinstock returned to Stanford University. There he agreed to help alleviate a shortage of math teachers for only a single term. Though he was not awarded tenure, he taught in the Department of Mathematics at Stanford until the summer of 1954. For the next five years, he taught in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, and he was granted tenure after the fourth year.
Robert Weinstock filled a sabbatical-replacement position in mathematics at Oberlin College during the academic year 1959-1960. During that first year in Oberlin, he developed a strong desire to stay, but no opening existed in the Department of Mathematics. However, when esteemed Professor of Physics Forest G. Tucker retired in June 1960, Weinstock was offered a two year appointment in the Department of Physics. He joined the Department on July 1, 1960 and was recommended for a permanent appointment in November 1961. At the time of his appointment the Department consisted of David L. Anderson, Thurston Manning, and Carl Ellis Howe.
During his years at Oberlin College, Robert Weinstock taught nearly every basic undergraduate physics course. In addition to a heavy load of elementary courses, he ordinarily taught an advanced course in theoretical mechanics or electromagnetic theory each semester. Special reading course students and honors students regularly enrolled in his classes. Weinstock was looked upon by his peers as a talented theoretical physicist and an unassuming but highly motivated, energetic and creative individual. He was an effective and demanding educator who devoted a considerable amount of time and thought to his instructional methods and was attentive to the needs of individual students. He was professionally active, presenting numerous papers at American Association of Physics Teachers national meetings, and publishing papers and book reviews in various physics journals.
While on sabbatical leave in the Department of Theoretical Physics at Oxford University, England, in 1965-1966, he worked on a derivation of the Maxwell-Boltzmann, Bose-Einstein, and Fermi-Dirac distribution formulas by means of the fundamental Darwin-Fowler formulation. To advance his scholarly work, he used only undergraduate-level multivariate calculus and avoided the multivariable analytic function theory employed by Charles Galton Darwin (d. 1962) and Ralph Howard Fowler (d. 1944).The results appeared in the American Journal of Physics of August 1967 under the title "New Approach to Statistical Mechanics.” Weinstock later referred to this undertaking as "the most satisfying piece of work" he had ever accomplished. He participated in a 1967 visiting scientists program sponsored by the American Association of Physics Teachers and the American Institute of Physics and underwritten by the National Science Foundation intended to foster interest in physics and physics education. Around 1978, his work with low-temperature theorist James C. Rainwater gave rise to controversy regarding Newton's Principia. A referee put forth that their geometric solution of the inverse-square orbit problem had already been used in the Principia. Careful reexamination convinced Weinstock that Newton's proof that inverse-square force implies conic-section orbit rests on an invalid argument.
In 1977, his position at Oberlin was reduced to the teaching of a single year-long applicable mathematics course. He accepted an early retirement plan and became Emeritus Professor in 1983, but continued to teach the applicable math course for many years without remuneration. His fifty-year career as an instructor formally ended after 1989-1990. On April 22, 1950, Weinstock married Stanford mathematics graduate, Elizabeth (known to all as Betty) W. Brownell (b. 1927). Two sons, Frank and Robert, were born to this marriage.
Robert Weinstock died at his home on Tuesday, May 16, 2006, at the age of 87. Family members attributed his death to heart complications.
Sources Consulted
"An account of the professional career of Robert Weinstock...as reported in February 1997 to Professor Paul A. Heiney, Department of Physics, U. of P."
Ganzel, Carol. 1984. "Emeritus Professor Weinstock continues teaching." The Observer (February 2), 3.
Faculty file of Robert Weinstock, Development and Alumni Records, 28/3.
Forms of Material (links to similar genres) Administrative InformationDavid L. Anderson Papers [OCA 30/65].
Former Faculty, Staff & Trustees [OCA 28/3], Box 143.
Records of the Department of Physics [OCA 9/5/1].
The Robert Weinstock papers, which heavily focus on Weinstock's scholarly activity outside the classroom, largely consist of his correspondence with colleagues and with the editors of various physics journals.
Weinstock regularly reviewed books, instructional texts and manuscripts submitted for publication in the American Journal of Physics, and his own work was published recurrently in several prominent physics journals. His professional activity as an outside referee is corroborated by an extensive series of letters to the authors whose work he appraised and to the editor of AmJPhys dating from 1966 to 2000. More correspondence with the editor of AmJPhys exists regarding Weinstock's own submissions, 1961-1991. The Principia argument is discussed in communication with other physics professors, 1979-1982, preceding the publication of his article "Dismantling a centuries-old myth: Newton's Principia and inverse-square orbits", 1983. This set of material is among the most significant in the collection.
The collection contains reprints of articles written by Weinstock, which appeared in serials such as Physical Review, American Mathematical Monthly, and the American Journal of Physics, 1942-2000.
Although Weinstock's teaching and research files contain evidence of his early work as an instructor at Stanford in the form of a document entitled "A Brief Course in Elementary Optics", October 1943, little is revealed concerning the structure of the courses he taught at Oberlin College.
SERIES DESCRIPTIONS
Series I. Biographical Files, 1937-38, 1968-1999, 2001 (0.05 l.f.)
Biographical materials include curricula vitae, faculty information blanks, publications lists, a birth certificate, and a copy of Robert Weinstock's letter to the editor of the OAM [Winter 1995] titled "Oberlin education as fine as ever". More biographical information can be found in copies of other articles which appeared in the OAM [1984] and The Observer [1984]. Of special note is "An account of the professional career of Robert Weinstock...as reported in February 1997 to Professor Paul A. Heiney, Department of Physics, University of Pennsylvania". The biographical series also contains several certificates that Mr. Weinstock received throughout his professional career, including awards given to him from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1990), the Marquis Who’s Who (in America) Publications Board (1991/92 and 1999), and the International Biographical Centre in Cambridge, England (1992).
Series II. Correspondence Files, 1944-2004, n.d. (1.95 l.f.)
The bulk of the correspondence is between Weinstock and other scholars and teachers in the physics field, as well as editors of various physics journals regarding his own submissions and his work as an independent reviewer. Materials detailing Weinstock's activities as an outside reviewer of manuscripts submitted for publication in the American Journal of Physics include correspondence with editors of the AmJPhys and responses from authors. Also classified here is similar correspondence pertaining to several book reviews.
The correspondence series is divided into three subseries. Subseries 1 consists of correspondence between Robert Weinstock and former students and colleagues from Oberlin College (1960-2004, n.d.). Included here are letters sent and received by Mr. Weinstock from former students Margaret Cheney, Peter Molnar, Albert Moyer, Lawrence Holladay, and Edwin Taylor, among others. Weinstock's correspondence with former students primarily consists of requests for recommendations as well as both personal and professional communication after graduation. The subseries also contains correspondence with Oberlin College faculty members and administrators. Included here is a succession of long letters from Weinstock to his hospitalized colleague, David L. Anderson, 1986, which was returned to Weinstock by Anderson's widow, Madeleine. The subseries contains correspondence with other Oberlin colleagues such as William Renfrow, John Scofield, Susan Colley, and college presidents Frederick Starr and Nancy Dye, among others. The correspondence with President S. Frederick Starr is a restricted file and available by permission of the archivist.
Letters to and from W.E. Haisley, 1980-1981, Steven J. Heims, 1980-1982, Ernan McMullin, 1980-1981, and Joseph W. Dauben, editor of Historia Mathematica, 1980-1982, substantiating the debate fomented by Weinstock's objections to Newton's logical reasoning in the Principia, can be found in subseries 2.
Subseries 3 consists of correspondence (sent or received) relating to various projects and research topics in physics (1944-2004, n.d.). The files are organized by names of individual contacts, or by title and subject of research project (as maintained by Professor Weinstock), and include both projects of Robert Weinstock and of other scholars in the field of physics. Professional correspondents include Margaret Rayner of St. Hilda's College, Oxford, England, 1977-1979, who repeatedly sought Weinstock's assistance in constructing IB Further Mathematics examinations, and Edward M. Kiess, 1988-1989, with whom Weinstock exchanged ideas concerning Kiess' article, "Evolution of chemical potential and energy for an ideal Fermi-Dirac gas.” Please see the Robert Weinstock Papers inventory for a complete listing of individual correspondents and research topics. Weinstock’s writings are filed in Series VIII.
Series III. Files relating to the Oberlin College Department of Physics, 1961-1965, 1980-1981, 1991, n.d. (0.2 l.f.)
Items pertaining to the Physics library include lists of books purchased through the John W. Heckert Fund and the Forest G. Tucker Fund, 1960-1961, and a complete copy of Applied Physics Letters v. 1 no. 2 [October 1962]. The series contains some correspondence with department chair Joseph N. Palmieri, 1980-1981, re general administrative matters. Also grouped here are departmental memoranda and physics staff meeting agendas. An entry for Physics Lecture Series contains correspondence with speakers, schedules and news releases.
Series IV. Grant Files, 1961-1964 (0.2 l.f.)
Papers produced during and after application for three National Science Foundation grants include requests to the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences to make proposals, itemized lists of experiments and apparatus needed, proposals, news releases, summary reports and expenditure lists.
Series V. Talks and Speeches, 1962-1994
This series consists of speeches and talks delivered by Mr. Weinstock to academic audiences as well as materials related to college/university visits and guest lectures. Of note is Mr. Weinstock’s speech, “Two Kinds of Truth,” delivered as the Oberlin College Senior Assembly Address in 1962. Also included in the series are materials relating to talks given by Mr. Weinstock at Principia College (1994), Southern Methodist University (1964), and the annual Sigma XI Initiation Banquet (1971).
Series VI. Teaching and Fellowship Files, 1943, 1954-1990 (0.4 l.f.)
An outline of Robert Weinstock's course in Elementary Optics at Stanford University, October 1943, manifests his earliest work as a physics instructor. Weinstock's winter term files contain bulletins, project proposals and evaluations. Most of these materials relate to his sponsorship of winter term projects in Reading Dickens, 1976-1982. Also presented here are files devoted to his National Science Foundation Faculty Fellowship at Oxford University, England, 1965-1966, as well as to other sabbaticals at Oxford, 1972-1973, 1976-1977. The Teaching and Fellowship files also include classroom anecdotes and cartoons saved by Professor Weinstock as well as sample examinations and solutions to physics problems. The gradebooks and class lists contained in this series are restricted files.
Series VII. Topical Files, 1942-1993 (span) (0.4 l.f.)
Entries exist documenting Robert Weinstocks attendance at various professional conferences between 1961 and 1978, his work on the American Association of Physics Teachers Committee on Resource Letters, 1969-1972, and his involvement in the American Institute of Physics Visiting Scientists Program, 1967-1971, and the Ohio Academy of Science Visiting Scientists Program, 1961-1971.
Series VIII. Writings Files, 1942-2004 (span) (0.19 l.f.)
The series is divided into three subseries. The first subseries contains articles (primarily reprints) and letters to the editor written by Mr. Weinstock and published in professional physics journals including the American Journal of Physics, The Physical Review, The Physics Teacher, and Historia Mathematica. Subseries 2 consists of published book reviews written by Robert Weinstock, as well as correspondence with editors of professional physics journals relating to articles and book reviews (written by or about Robert Weinstock). The third subseries contains Mr. Weinstock’s unpublished manuscripts, papers, and reviews. Please refer to the inventory for a listing of specific titles.
Series IX. Photographs, 1968 (0.01 l.f.)
The photographic series contains six 4x5, black and white prints. All are candid shots of Robert Weinstock interacting with colleagues and students at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. One subject is identified as Vern Eaton.