Retired professor donates physics books

The donor is Dr. T. Ashworth, a native of England who came to South Dakota Tech in 1968 to do research and remained on the faculty there until retiring in 2000.

His wife, Dr. E. Ashworth, taught mining engineering at the Rapid City school for 23 years. The Ashworths are selling their home in Rapid City and will be living the year-round in Arizona, where they have previously spent the winters,

There were at least 175 books packed in the boxes. He had acquired some of them before he came to the United States and obtained the others over the years from fellow faculty members, publishing companies and their representatives and while attending physics conferences. Many are textbooks and others are classic reference books that are no longer in print.

Chadron State personnel said the books will be invaluable to physics students. The college’s primary physics professor, Roger Kendrick, plans to have them available in the CSC physics laboratory on the top floor of the Math and Science Building for students to check out. He admitted that he’s anxious to browse through them himself.

Former CSC physics professor Dr. Lois Veath, now dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, called the contribution “great.”

“Some of these books would be extremely expensive to purchase,” said Veath. “We wouldn’t have the resources to purchase all of them. Some of them are really special. Our library has some reference books in physics, but, like most libraries, it doesn’t carry many textbooks.”

Both Veath and Kendrick said frequently authors of physics texts take different approaches in solving problems. Students who have difficulty grasping the concept used by one author can often understand the method used by another author.

“It all depends on how your brain is wired,” said Veath. “When I was teaching I often loaned books from my personal collection to students so they could read another presentation that makes more sense to them.”

Kendrick added that when he can’t answer questions on a certain physics process to their satisfaction, he will point the students to a reference book so they can read and re-read another approach.

“Now we’ll have a lot more books to help them,” said Kendrick. “I promise that we’ll put them to good use. These are special books that will be great resources for all of us involved in physics.”

Both of the Ashworths grew up in working class families and then attended Manchester University in their homeland. He had earned a doctorate and she had a bachelor’s degree when they came to South Dakota Tech in 1968 after he received a fellowship to work on a weather modification project supported by the Navy.

They planned to stay in the United States a couple of years and then return to England to teach. But during that time the bottom fell out of job market and housing costs skyrocketed in England, causing them to remain in the U.S.

He was hired as a physics professor at the Rapid City school and she earned a master’s degree there and then a doctorate in mining at the University of Arizona. During his years at South Dakota Tech, the institution’s physics students often ranked in the upper 98 percentile on national tests and the number of physics graduates was among the top 20 percent in the nation.

There were two primary reasons that Ashworth contributed the books to Chadron State. His first graduate student at Tech was Marle (Chip) Smith, a native of Chadron and a CSC graduate who now lives in Scottsbluff. Smith’s master’s thesis was among the books turned over to CSC. And, the Ashworths were familiar with Veath because they had attended one the Expanding Your Horizons Conferences that she spearheaded at CSC for more than a decade and were impressed with her enthusiasm for science.

After delivering the books Friday, the Ashworths visited Smith’s parents, Marle and Laurine, in Chadron. The elder Smith was a science professor at CSC for 24 years.

While he’s giving his books away, Ashworth is still enthused about physics. He said that while it is a difficult subject for many to master, things will fall into place if the student has a solid understanding of mathematics.

“I’ve found that someone trained in physics can do a darned good job in just about anything,” he said, “because they know how to make applications and use conceptual thought.”