22 June 2001 - Eric Bittner ('01)

Hi All,

I must say that reading about the demise of the reactor is certainly the sad point of my day today. I can't say that nuclear physics certainly plays a big part in my career at the moment. It certainly did influence my career as an experimental physicist in a profound way. All kidding aside, Nuc Phys was one of the coolest courses I took and certainly prepared me to work my tail off in grad school. That, and the fact that VU had the reactor was a huge factor in why I went to VU in the first place.

Life in Houston is going well. We came through the flood with out too much damage. Waking up at 2am to find your garage ankle deep in water and the street waist deep was a bit of a shock. We were fortunate, just down the street and closer to one of the bayous, houses had multiple feet of water inside. It's become a bit of a sigh of manlihood to have a huge pile of soaked debris stacked in front of your house these days. Univ. of Houston was closed for a solid week and the basement of one of the chemistry buildings (rather I should say one of the buildings we share) was completely flooded (past the ceiling). So, those labs are destroyed completely. The real pain was that the underground power transformers, telecommunications relays, hot and cold water pipes, etc... flooded as well and have to be dug up and replaced. So UH looks like a war hit it. In fact, a small tactical nuclear strike would do the place some good at this point. The building I'm in was not too affected, some flooding from roof leaks destroyed 2 labs. My area is OK. With the exception of a sudden explosion of the mosquito population *in* my office area, its buisiness as ususal.

Tenure comes up next summer, so this looks to be a busy year. It should go pretty well. Funding's been as good as it gets (although I could always use another federal grant), papers have been coming out at a pretty good clip, and my students are finally getting productive. So, I feel pretty confident.

I run into Sandy Rosenthal on occasion, usually at the APS meetings. We should try to have a VU alumni party at the next APS March meeting in Indy. I'd be happy to look into it and help organize.

Best regards,

Eric

[Editor's note: Eric is on the chemistry faculty at the University of Houston. Sandy Rosenthal is on the chemistry faculty at Vanderbilt University.]