Carl Helrich

Purpose

I joined this group because I consider Climate Change to be the primary issue facing civilization in the 21st century. I think the broad implications, which we are beginning to experience, will surpass anticipation.

Experience

My first interests were in propulsion dynamics, which attracted me to the thermodynamicist (J.R. Moszynski) with whom I did my undergraduate thesis at Case Institute of Technology (now CWRU). But my interests were moving to physics and specifically statistical mechanics and plasma physics. Plasma physics was supported by the ME/AS Department at Northwestern University, where I received the PHD from Marvin Lewis. I was offered positions with NASA Lewis in 1963 (Electromagnetic Propulsion) and in 1965 (Project Centaur), which I turned down for graduate education. I encountered advanced ideas in energy production with my work on a BS thesis, which would be pushed toward metal vapor for high temperature, in core turbines, and at the Kernforschungsanlage (now the Forschungszentrum) Jülich, where I initially worked on the in core thermionic diode (plasma) at the Institut für Technische Physik.

I moved into biophysics at the Institut für Neurobiologie (under Henig Stieve) while in Jülich. Then atBethel College in Kansas I could do nothing more than membrane modeling. At Goshen College I did some work in x-ray diffraction, which was departmental emphasis, and quantum magnetism for a colleague at the University of Notre Dame (Jacek Furdyna). I returned to biophysics (Artificial Phospholipid Bilayer) with a sabbatical in physiology (with Larry Pinto) at Northwestern University. My last years have been spent in collaboration with a colleague at Brigham Young University (Dixon Woodbury) working in the area of physical chemistry of membranes. I have concentrated on formation ergosterol and cholesterol channels in membranes. This effort involved experimental bilayer work amplified with Monte-Carlo modeling.

My work since 1976 has primarily involved undergraduate students, most of whom have gone on to obtain the PHD, although not necessarily in biophysics.

I am the author of three textbooks (Modern Thermodynamics with Statistical Mechanics, The Classical Theory of Fields, and Analytical Mechanics) published by Springer-Verlag in Germany. I am presently writing a text on Quantum Mechanics for Springer. My primary teaching responsibility is online for a medical physics program (Radiological Technologies University – South Bend).