I'm very sad to hear of Professor Reid's passing. I've attached a word doc with some anecdotes from my experiences at UCD with Rod. Please let me know if there is anything else I can do to help with honoring this great teacher.

-Ray

When you visited Rod Reid with a question, he wouldn’t let you leave until he was sure you got the answer you were looking for. I can remember one instance where he explained some concept that I was struggling with, and with a 100-yard stare on my face I said, “OK, I think I got it”, to which he replied, “No, you don’t”. He then continued to explain the same concept in two more completely different ways, and after each explanation, regardless of what I said, he would look at my facial expression to see if it stuck.

Another tale I’ve often told is when, in the middle of a very tough E&M exam, a student suddenly stood up from his desk, crumbled his exam, and threw it in the trash before storming out of the classroom. This student was actually a nice guy and always asked good questions, so it was obvious his frustration was with himself. We sat stunned for a moment. Then Prof Reid walked over to the trash can and pulled out the exam, un-crinkled it, and sat down to grade it anyway. It turned out that all of us were doing just as horrible as that student and he ended up receiving a very generous grade.

Once, Prof Reid was late for his own class. We thought this was just great, and we decided to pretend as if we began class without him. We wrote several equations on the board, such as Maxwell’s Equations, etc., all incorrectly to see if he’d notice. When he eventually showed up, we explained that we were just reviewing in his absence. He apologized and picked up the eraser to prepare for his lecture, and just before swiping the equations off the board he yelled, “Wait a second, what is all this!” We all laughed while he corrected each equation one-by-one.

Many thanks Rod for all your time, generosity, and making physics entertaining.

Raymond W. Friddle, Ph.D.
Technical Staff
Sandia National Laboratories