Robert Lee Bowden, Jr. Essay Prize

Dr. Robert Bowden first came to Virginia Tech as a graduate student in 1956. After one year, he left for a brief active duty tour in the U. S. Army to fulfill his ROTC obligation. He returned to the university to get his Master's degree in physics in 1958 with T. Marshall Hahn, Jr. as his major advisor. He obtained his Ph.D. in physics in 1963 with Clayton Williams as his major advisor. Dr. Bowden remained at Virginia Tech with a postdoctoral appointment under Andy Robeson until he joined the physics faculty as an assistant professor in the fall of 1963. He was promoted to associate professor in 1968 and to full professor in 1978. He retired in the spring of 1996.

His published interest and expertise is in mathematical physics, neutron transport, radiative transfer, and analytical, numerical, and chaotic analysis of non-linear integral equations.

His presentation interest is physics education, especially the use of computers in physics teaching. He and his beloved colleague Dale Long developed an extensive set of (software and apparatus) presentations in which data are collected and analyzed live in the classroom.

Since retirement, Dr. Bowden has become what is now called an Emeritus Professor in Residence. He has remained moderately engaged in physics by mentoring high school physics teachers, giving talks to a Governor's school, writing educational software, and teaching an occasional undergraduate physics class at Tech.

He is a big Virginia Tech football fan. One of his favorite stories is about attending the 2000 Sugar Bowl College football championship in New Orleans when Virginia Tech played Florida State. The coach at Florida State is, of course, Bobby Bowden, which happens to be the name that Dr. Bowden's childhood friends call him. To add a little mischief to his trip, he registered with his travel group, his hotel, and his dinner reservations as "Bobby Bowden". His youngest son, Brent, emailed WSLS TV in Roanoke to explain that Bobby Bowden, his wife, and sons would be cheering for Virginia Tech at the game. The TV channel ran a teaser all day claiming that they would have an interview with "Bobby Bowden" during their pregame show explaining how he would be cheering for Virginia Tech.

The tragedy of April 16, 2007 moved many of us to redo and rededicate our service to the University. It was in that spirit that Dr. Bowden's family established the Bowden Physics Essay Competition, not only to reward and honor high promise and good scholarship, but to provide a regular extra curricular activity that would encourage and promote good writing for our undergraduate physics majors. Observation and experimentation are cornerstones of physics. But physics at its core is an amalgam, an abstraction, and an accretion of ideas that makes clear and definitive writing a necessity. It is the Bowdens' hope, their desire, that this competition will become a tradition for our physics majors in their learning to write well, forcefully, and beautifully if they can.

2009   Justin Bangerter (Essay in PDF)