Remembering Don Cox

He was a wonderful teacher. Never a dull moment when attending his lectures. And c’mon, that’s saying something. A fellow classmate of mine and I share an inside story about one such lecture, which we both treasure to this day! Happy trails, Professor Cox, and thank you.

Don was a friend and colleague, who spread his love of life, and of physics in particular, to all those around him. I miss him.

As a freshman physics major in spring 1974 I was fortunate to take Introductory Physics from Don Cox.  I also ended up in his discussion section. He was informal with us and even invited us to parties at his house. I remember the exams in the evening with no time limit.   Most of the problems were pretty straight forward but there was always one extra credit problem as a challenge which kept me there working on it until it was time to concede. As the second semester of the course finished, Don connected me with Kraushaar’s space physics group where I worked as a lab assistant the rest of my undergraduate career. Don provided a great start to my career in physics and introduction to a very welcoming Physics Department which was my academic and research home for 11 years.

He led my evening 207 discussion/lab.  It took very little convincing for him to allow a couple of us to turn a table-top pendulum
experiment into a two-story, stairwell version.  (He gave his approval with a chuckle and twinkle in his eye.)  He appeared to genuinely love teaching physics to newbies.

I first met Don when I was still in high school. He was a visiting professor at Rice University, and I was fortunate enough to participate in a new mentorship program that paired students with working scientists. Once a week I would drive to Rice to meet with him, often on colloquium day. I could not have known then how consequential those visits would be. Years later, after completing undergraduate degrees in Physics and Astronomy at the University of Texas, I sought Don out again for graduate school. I eventually completed my PhD with him in 1994. By then, he had influenced me in ways that extended far beyond the subject of my dissertation.

Don had a wonderfully well-founded skepticism of conventional thinking, particularly in interstellar-medium astrophysics. He was always willing to question an accepted explanation, but the questioning was never contrarian for its own sake. He would go back to the underlying physics, reason from first principles, and ask whether the prevailing idea really made sense. That habit of mind stayed with me and has influenced the way I approach difficult problems throughout my career. He was also a gifted writer. I learned nearly as much from Don about constructing an argument, choosing words carefully, and writing clear, solid prose as I did about astrophysics. Those lessons have remained useful to me in almost everything I have done since.

And then there are the more personal memories. Don had a fondness for fountain pens and gave one to each of his graduate students when they finished. I still have mine and cherish it more than thirty years later. For a time he smoked a pipe, and even now the distinctive smell of pipe tobacco can unexpectedly bring him immediately to mind. I was extraordinarily fortunate that a high-school mentorship introduced me to Don Cox. He became my teacher, dissertation advisor, collaborator, and one of the people who most profoundly shaped the way I think and write. I remain deeply grateful to him.