The Department of Physics and Astronomy welcomes its new Chairperson, Dr. Andrew Zentner. This position is effective as of September 1, 2024. Dr. Zentner assumes this position from Dr. Arthur Kosowsky, who held it since 2017.

Below, Dr. Zentner has answered our Ten Questions prompt to help our community get to know him a little better.

1. Who do you most admire? 

My wife. She is a great engineer, a fierce executive, an amazing mother, a spectacular athlete, and best of all, the most genuine person I have ever met.

2. What is your idea of happiness? 

I find happiness by making everything I do fun.

3. What do you enjoy doing most?

Learning new things.

4. What is your biggest pet peeve?

Using sin^-1(x) instead of arcsin(x) and so on. 

5. What talent would you like to have? 

I do not believe that talent exists.

6. What do you most value in a colleague? 

Willingness to engage in free-form, exploratory discussions.

7. What is your motto?

Don’t make excuses, make choices.

8. People would be surprised to know… 

I think I hold a lot of surprises, but in graduate school, I removed the telephone poles from a highway. In so doing, I learned that telephone poles are unimaginably heavy.

9. Are you a morning person or night owl? 

Yes.

10. If you were stuck on a desert island, what three things would you need to have with you?

I would need: (1) a guitar (a Taylor PS24 preferably), (2) a barbell, and (3) a solar-powered iPad loaded with all of the classic physics textbooks (but this seems like cheating).