Albert Bartlett

1923 - 7 September 2013

Albert Bartlett, Professor Emeritus at the University of Colorado at Boulder, was one of the giants of Physics Education. President of the American Association of Physics Teachers in 1978, he played a major role in establishing the Ontario Section of the American Association of Physics Teachers, now known as the Ontario Association of Physics Teachers.

He has devoted much of his professional life to contemplating the effects of growth on our society, and in particular the growth in the use of oil. He has delivered his lecture, Arithmetic, Population and Energy over 1600 times, surely the world record for a Physics Lecture. Many of his papers have recently been published as a book that should be on the shelf of every Physics Teacher: The Essential Exponential! For the Future of Our Planet.

He published a series of eleven papers in The Physics Teacher on The Expontial Function from 1976 to 1990, where he examined the effects of growth on such items as salaries, postage stamps, and oil consumption. The last article, The New Flat Earth Society is a satire on those who think that growth can continue for ever.

You can find a detailed acount of his work, particulary as it applies to the problem of oil supplies, at these web sites:

http://www.albartlett.org/
http://www.hubbertpeak.com/bartlett/

A memorial page, describing his immense contributions to Physics is available here:

http://phys.colorado.edu/events/memoriam-albert-bartlett

Copies of his book and the accompanying DVD, written with Robert G. Fuller, Vicki L. Plaon Clark, and John A. Rogers, are available here:

The Center for Science, Mathematics and Computer Education,
University of Nebraska Lincoln, 
251 Avery Hall, 
P.O. Box 880131, 
Lincoln, NE 68588-0131, 
Telephone (402) 472-8965, 
Fax (402) 472-9311, 
Email:  scimath@unl.edu