Anecdote about Dr. L. David Wyly

Submitted by Cletus M. Bost, Jr. (Mel Bost) Physics '69

Dr. Wyly was one of the two finest professors I had the pleasure of studying with as an undergraduate at Georgia Tech. (The other was Dr. Alson H. Bailey in the School of Mathematics.) At the beginning of each course Physics 301, 302 and 303 which were required courses in the Physics major's curriculum covering Mechanics, Electric/Magnetic Fields and Heat/Light/Sound, Dr. Wyly would spend the first two to three weeks of class teaching us the essential mathematics to understand the physics. Especially notable was his coverage of vector analysis and calculus including curl and divergence and the physical interpretations of these topics. I did not appreciate what he taught us until I was a graduate student at The University of Michigan studying quantum mechanics with Dr. James Duderstadt. Dr. Duderstadt was also a very thorough mathematician and, when it came to vector analysis, his treatment was so much the same as Dr. Wyly's that I began to q! uestion whether there were some connection. It was not until my daughter attended Yale University that I learned that Dr. Wyly and Dr. Duderstadt both studied at Yale, Wyly receiving a Ph.D. in Physics and Duderstadt receiving a BS in Engineering. But their treatment of vector analysis and calculus was so similar that I determined that it was probably derived from the handwritten notes of Dr. Josiah Willard Gibbs which were handed down from professor to student over the years at Yale. I have always felt that Dr. Wyly's treatment of vector analysis and his rigor of explanation gave me such a complete understanding of this topic, that I was confident when approaching any new area of physics such as plasmas and fusion which were explained mathematically by vector analysis.