Jess Brewer's story about Erich
Erich Vogt --> Personal Memories of Erich Vogt --> here
Few people display greatness in quite so many different ways. I will always miss Erich's booming voice resounding down the corridors of TRIUMF, his generous support and sage advice for our research efforts, his inspirational (for both students and faculty) teaching, his plenitude of backyard tomatoes and his warm friendship. I wish he could have lived forever.
Although Erich's Directorial guidance and support for µSR at TRIUMF made my research career possible (maybe I'll add some anecdotes about Director Erich later), my most cherished memories of him are from our years of sharing the teaching of First Year Honours Physics at UBC. Back when it was PHYS 120 (a full-year course, now forbidden at UBC) we actually shared the stage and listened to each other's lectures; when it got split into PHYS 121/122 (now 107/108) each of us had our own Term but we traded off which terms we each taught and we kept the habit of attending each other's lectures. From these experiences I gained enormous respect for Erich as an educator.
"Lecturing" has become a dirty word in science education circles these days, since quantitative research has shown that more students learn better and faster through participatory activities where they have to formulate and deconstruct their own explanations. Erich did not question the numbers, but he demonstrated and defended the importance of great lectures throughout his teaching career, from which he retired at 80 only because he was getting tired; for the last decade or more he taught for free. It was Erich's opinion that students learn best if they are motivated to learn, and that the motivation to "get good grades" was a pathetic substitute for genuine inspiration. He spoke slowly and clearly, showed every step of his explanations, and constantly checked his audience's faces for looks of incomprehension, dawning understanding or delight. He never failed to show his own delight -- for ideas, for methods, for the miraculous emergence of deeper understanding, and for cool demos!
I believe his students' favourite demo was "Rocket Propulsion", in which he sat on a swivel chair and used a CO2 fire extinguisher to spin himself around at dangerous angular velocities. I suspect it was also his favourite.
His favourite derivation, I'm sure, was Olber's Paradox in which simple logic and geometrical arguments reveal that the universe cannot be infinite in both age and extent; this conclusion requires no knowledge of Relativity or Astrophysics, and demonstrates that clear thought is all you need.
One of Erich's annual declarations was, "Now that you know Calculus and Mechanics, you can solve any problem!" That was probably an exaggeration, but what a wonderful one....
More later. -- Jess 09:32, 6 March 2014 (PST)
A poem written by Jess H. Brewer on the occasion of Erich W. Vogt's retirement from the Directorship of TRIUMF, 31 March 1994:
