I am truly saddened to hear of Rod's recent passing. I must echo the sentiments of fellow graduate students (particularly Mike Hayden and Jeff Lewis, who both took Rod's 1983-84 graduate quantum mechanics class with me) that Rod was a truly unparalleled instructor in both his acumen and generosity with his time. I remember fondly several of his amusing quirks that others have related (his love of the number 37, his remarkable memory for details, the way he would solicit questions in lecture, etc.), and I'd like to add my own remembrances.

After he graded an exam, he'd post a (hand-crafted) histogram of the grades. The top grade would have a little arrow pointing toward it with a name at the other end (in our class, that name was usually "Yang"), to give credit to the top performer. For the first exam of his that I took, I made the extremely dubious choice of staying up all night the night before to work on a homework set (unrelated to the exam). I came in the next morning and utterly bombed the test. I was so flustered at my inability to even function during the exam, that I ended up writing Rod a note on the test itself. I don't recall the content of the note, but I do remember it was rife with self-serving nonsense that only a young kid fresh out of undergraduate school, convinced he will be the next Richard Feynman, could come up with. Rod replied with a terse note on my exam that both showed patience with my immature sensibilities and at the same time challenged me to accomplish what I obviously felt I was capable of. I found my test score well below the pack on the histogram, and like the top score, it also merited an arrow. Instead of my name, the arrow was labelled, "special case, presumably", indicating that he assumed that this was not going to happen again.

In the years that followed, I would run into Rod now and then, in the halls of the physics department, or at the Davis Food Coop. Whenever I did, he would regale me with talk of everything from his trips to Yosemite where he would frequently go for hikes, to chuckling over the essay he remembered reading from my graduate school application a dozen or more years earlier. Then, as suddenly as the conversation started (usually he would blindside me with a comment that was a complete non-sequitor to me, until I eventually figured out what he was talking about), it would end, and he would stride off purposefully. I'll miss his infectious humor and his remarkable insights into physics and the human condition. May the force be with him.

Tom Weideman