Professor of Physics Harald Jensen created and shared ground-breaking physics demonstrations and teaching methods with students and faculty at Lake Forest College as well as with high school and college physics teachers across the United States and throughout the world.
A renowned leader in the area of teaching physics and designing physics apparatus, Jensen’s signature method—using live demonstrations of physics phenomenon at the start of class—is still used widely today.
A longtime faculty member who helped spark interest in physics to countless instructors and students, Jensen rose to Chair of the Department of Physics in 1954, a position he held until 1967. He retired in 1973.
It is remarkable that 50 years later, Harald’s son Chris Jensen bequeathed $6.6 million to establish the Harald C. Jensen Endowed Chair for Physics as well as the Harald C. Jensen Fund for Physics, which will help support the teaching, research, and operational needs of the physics department.
Professor Michael Kash named first Harald C. Jensen Chair for Physics
Professor of Physics Michael M. Kash ’77 is the first recipient of the Harald C. Jensen Endowed Chair for Physics.
A member the College faculty since 1988, Kash earned his undergraduate degree in physics and mathematics at Lake Forest College, becoming a Forester the year after Professor Jensen retired. Although he was retired, Jensen was still a visible presence on campus, continuing to create his signature hallway demonstrations and teaching an occasional class. Jensen believed in the power of those demos to spark the interest of students and all passersby into the fascinating world of physics.
Kash had the honor of working alongside Jensen to create those signature hallway demos—a tradition that continues today—and still has Jensen’s notebooks on his bookshelves in his office in the Lillard Science Center. “Harald used to say, ‘Let the phenomenon do the teaching,’” Kash said.
Kash went on to earn his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1988. His specializations include the interaction of atoms with electric and magnetic fields, atomic structure, laser spectroscopy, and quantum optics. He works with single-frequency diode laser systems in both vapor cells and thermal atomic beams. He also studies short-pulsed NMR and Foucault pendulums.
An exceptional teacher, advisor, scholar, and community member, Kash is widely published in professional journals and earned the William L. Dunn Award for Outstanding Teaching and Scholarly Promise, the Trustee Award for Teaching Excellence and Campus Leadership, the Richard W. Hantke Alumni Teacher Award, the John Rush Award from the Illinois State Physics Project, and the Bird Award for Intellectual Contributions to the Campus Community.
“Harald could quiet a group by just entering and doing something phenomenological without saying anything.” —Roy Coleman, Chicago Public Schools physics teacher
Chris Jensen continues his father’s legacy with bequest
Chris Jensen was the force behind the bequest to the College to continue the physics legacy his father started in 1943.
Before his death in 2022, Chris donated to the College many artifacts, including numerous journals with articles and letters by his father, a trove of correspondence, his father’s Millikan Medal, an antique variable inductor, and binoculars Harald received upon retiring.
Chris was a notable force in his own right with interesting ties to his father’s legacy. Chris became a decorated Navy pilot decades after his father taught military pilots during World War II. After his Naval career as test pilot came to a close, Chris was a helicopter flight intructor and world traveler.
Though he traveled around the globe and made headlines himself, Chris fondly remembered living on Foss Court in Lake Bluff and visiting his father’s lab in what was then the Physics Building, now Carnegie Hall. Sliding down the bannisters from the third floor to his dad’s office on the first floor was a treasured memory.
“Harald was the physics person the rest of us took as a model. No lecture, start with live phenomena.” —Earl Zwicker, Professor at Illinois Institute of Technology
Jensen embraced teaching through showing
Harald Jensen was teaching physics and chemistry at Lake Forest High School when, in the summer of 1942, he filled in for a Lake Forest College physics professor who entered the service during World War II; he never left. Jensen officially joined the College faculty in 1943, when he was listed in the course catalog as the sole physics professor, teaching four to five classes a semester.
After the start of WWII, enrollment in college physics courses skyrocketed, as an understanding of physics was recommended for men entering the service. As men enlisted, enrollment stayed high through the Army Specialized Training Program, which brought hundreds of draftees to campus for a few months to study physics and other sciences.
In the 1940s and ’50s, the struggle for supremacy in technology over the Eastern Bloc led to an emphasis on science in education and an overhaul of the country’s education system. In 1958, Congress enacted the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) to provide financial aid to teachers studying STEM subjects as well as grants to enhance equipment and materials in schools. Harald developed his own way of conducting a physics course lecture during this time. Rather than using a demonstration of a physics concept midway through a lecture or as the culmination at the end of the class, Harald started his lectures with the phenomenon.
Over the years, this approach spread through publications, meetings, and first-hand experience. “What Harald showed us we call the phenomenological approach: let the phenomena do the teaching,” said Earl Zwicke, Professor Emeritus at Illinois Institute of Technology.
The 1960s saw declining enrollment of physics students, both at the high school and college levels. In 1967, the National Science Foundation funded a project proposed by Harald called the Illinois State Physics Project (ISPP) with the focus of reversing the decreasing enrollment trend in high school physics courses. Five college professors from Illinois, including Jensen, began Summer In-Service Institutes and follow-up institutes for high school physics teachers at 11 college and universities in the state. Harald made sure that Lake Forest College was one of the sites.
In 1965, Harald was asked to join the Harvard Project Physics, which used a grant from the US Office of Education—now the Department of Education—to develop standardized textbooks and apparatus for high school physics. This project evolved from and eventually supplanted the Physical Science Study Committee work begun at MIT in 1956. As co-director of the project, Harald testified before a US House of Representatives committee in July 1966 which studied import tariffs taxed on science equipment purchased overseas. For this work, Harald received the 1966 American Association of Physics Teachers Distinguished Service Citation.
Meanwhile, in 1965 Harald traveled to Oxford, England to assist Oxford University with standardizing physics lab apparatus and the curriculum of the academically gifted in Europe. In 1970, he traveled to Hungary to oversee the apparatus exhibit at the International Congress on Education of Teachers, sponsored by the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics.
When funding for the ISPP ended in 1970, leaders met and voted to abandon the project, after which Harald said: “We can’t let this happen!” As a result Harald rallied nine high school and college teachers to keep meeting monthly during the academic year to share novel physics concepts and demonstrations. By 1974, nearly half of the Illinois high school physics teachers had participated in ISPP and its institutes.
“The reactions of students have conviced us that the fun is real and perhaps is a necessary adjunct of the teaching-learning endeavor.” —Harald Jensen, Physics Professor
In 1974, Harald Jensen was awarded the prestigious Robert A. Millikan Lecture Award for Teaching Excellence.
The Millikan Award is a medal given to individuals who provide notable contributions to the teaching of physics. The award was established in 1962 and is awarded by the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT). The winner receives a monetary award and certificate and delivers an address at an AAPT summer meeting.
During his Millikan address, Harald credited his former professor at the University of Iowa with instilling his “desire for excellence in physics” and planting the seeds for creative new apparatus and the phenomenological approach to physics.
“As far as I am concerned, the climax of this effort has been the inception and progress of the Illinois State Physics Project,” Harald said in his Millikan speech.