In 1986, alumni and friends of the University of Maryland’s Department of Physics endowed the Ralph Myers & Friends of Physics Award in honor of Professor and former Chair Ralph D. Myers (1912-1990). This endowment supports exceptional graduate students and teaching assistants in the Department of Physics.
Myers received his doctorate in theoretical nuclear physics at Cornell, where he was the first graduate student of 1967 Physics Nobel Prize winner, Hans Bethe. Myers’ paper on “the Angular Distribution of Resonance Disintegration Products” was the first calculation of the angular distribution of particles emitted in a compound nuclear reaction. As a result, he was asked to join the Manhattan Project during World War II. However, Myers chose to work in ballistics at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, while also continuing to teach at UMD.
Myers joined the University of Maryland’s faculty in 1938, where he became a highly esteemed administrator and teacher. For over 50 years, he made outstanding contributions to the Department of Physics, including directing the solid-state theory research group and further developing the graduate program. He received the Teaching Excellence Award of the Philosophical Society of Washington (now PSW Science) and was later elected its president. When he retired from UMD in 1979, he was awarded the title of Professor Emeritus. Myers continued to teach occasional classes and worked on introducing the power of computing technology to physics courses.