Issue date: 3/27/09 Section: Features

Media Credit: Christine Soriaga [Click to enlarge]

For years, the physics department has had to play the role of vagabonds without a permanent home. They have had to share their home with the mechanical engineering department and the department's undergraduate teaching labs are housed across campus in Heldenfels. The department is spread across campus in almost a dozen different buildings, making department cohesion difficult.

That is, until now.

The George P. and Cynthia Woods Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy building is nearing the final phases of construction to prepare for its opening next semester.

"It's really going to be nice for us," Ed Fry, department head of physics, said. "Right now, we're occupying about 11 different buildings on campus. I think it's going to be a tremendous boom for this University to have all of this teaching space [back]."

So far, the building is more than a $100 million project, according to Fry, and Mitchell has donated $52 million to the physics department for the project.

"George Mitchell is really the one that made this all possible," Fry said.

Mitchell was a 1940 graduate of Texas A&M and was awarded the University's Distinguished Alumni Award in 1977. Mitchell is the namesake for The George P. and Cynthia W. Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics.

Christopher Pope, distinguished professor and head of the Mitchell Institute described the institute as, "concerned with physics at the most fundamental level; trying to understand the theories and structures that underlie the universe down to the elementary scale of the subordinate particles that rule the universe. It's trying to reconcile the whole spectrum from the sub-atomic scale to the universe itself."

The main advantage of the building will be unification of the department in one definitive location, thus allowing for the Mitchell Institute to compete for world-class status.

"All of the great physics facilities around the world have all of their faculty and members under one roof as well as students and other visitors, and it provides for a much richer experience," Pope said. "It's very important because it will now house all of the members of the Mitchell Institute under one building. There are lots of things that will make it a very congenial place to work."

Continued...

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