Dr. Gary D. Westfall

University Distinguished Professor

Department of Physics and Astronomy and

National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory

Michigan State University

westfall@nscl.msu.edu

Biography

Gary Westfall received a B.S. degree from the University of Texas at Arlington (1972, Physics) and a Ph.D. degree from the University of Texas at Austin (1975, Nuclear Physics). From 1975 to 1977, Dr. Westfall was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL).  In 1977, Dr. Westfall became a Staff Scientist at LBNL, working at the Bevalac.  While at LBNL, Dr. Westfall co-authored two well-known papers on the Nuclear Fireball Model and the production of rare isotopes using 48Ca fragmentation. In 1981, Dr. Westfall left Berkeley and joined the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL) at Michigan State University (MSU) as a research professor.  Dr. Westfall joined the faculty of the Department of Physics and Astronomy as an Associate Professor in 1987 and became a Professor of Physics in 1991.  At the NSCL, Dr. Westfall constructed and operated the MSU 4π Array and studied multifragmentation and the disappearance of flow.  In 2003, Dr. Westfall was made University Distinguished Professor at MSU.  Currently Dr. Westfall is a member of the STAR Collaboration at RHIC. Dr. Westfall has published more than 190 papers in refereed scientific journals.  In 1999, Dr. Westfall became a Fellow of the American Physical Society. Dr. Westfall received the Distinguished Faculty Award from Michigan State University in 2002 and the Alexander-Von-Humboldt Distinguished Scientist Award in 2006.  Recently, Dr. Westfall served as Chair of the RHIC Users Executive Committee. Dr. Westfall has co-authored a physics textbook, Clixx Physik, published by Verlag Harry Deutsch (on CD) in Germany.  Dr. Westfall is currently co-authoring a physics textbook for McGraw-Hill on Physics for Scientists and Engineers. 

Dr. Westfall calls Texas home, having been born in Bryan, Texas, while his father was a student at Texas A&M University.

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