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The Cornell University Department of Physics, known for the versatility of its program, the breadth of its training, and Nobel Prize-winning work, is unsurpassed in many areas. The presence on campus of a particle accelerator, one of just a few of its magnitude anywhere in the world, contributes to Cornell’s reputation in particle and accelerator physics. The department has more than 40 active professors, approximately 180 graduate students and 65 undergraduate majors, and offers a full range of university-level work in physics, from general education courses for nonscientists to doctoral-level independent research.
The Bethe Way is the department's yearly magazine. In it, we share exciting highlights of faculty hires, research breakthroughs, staff changes, teaching reform, faculty awards, and alumni connections.
"Students across the country are going to miss out on innovative improvements to their science education – innovations that would have critically prepared them for the competitive 21st century technological workforce."
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Owen Wetherbee is a physics, mathematics & computer science major.
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Paul Malinowski received the 2025 Martin and Beate Block Winter Award from the Aspen Center for Physics.
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Donald Hartill, a professor of physics emeritus in the College of Arts and Sciences and a driving force behind decades of experimental research in particle physics, died on April 16. He was 86.
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Centenarian Roland Reisley ’46, BA ’45, an A&S physics alum, has resided in the Hudson Valley home for more than seven decades.
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Cornell researchers are helping upgrade the CMS detector at CERN, as LHC collaborations win the 2024 Breakthrough Prize for fundamental physics discoveries.
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Modern science wouldn’t exist without the online research repository known as arXiv, Sheon Han writes in a Wired feature about arXiv's creator Paul Ginsparg, professor of physics.
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"On my first day after joining a research group in graduate school a professor said, I hear you’re interested in instrumentation.’ I didn’t know what that was, but I thought I’d better say yes. When people think about physics, they think about a guy with a pencil and paper, but physics is an experimental science.”
- Peter Wittich, Professor and Director, Laboratory of Elementary Particle Physics