Francis Sears

Francis Weston Sears (October 1, 1898 – November 12, 1975) was an American physicist.^[1] He was a professor of physics at MIT for 35 years before moving to Dartmouth College in 1956 ^[2] and is best known for co-authoring University Physics, an introductory physics textbook, with Mark Zemansky. The book, first published in 1949, is often referred to as "Sears and Zemansky", although Hugh Young became a coauthor in 1973.

In 1932 he collaborated with Peter Debye in the discovery of what is now called the Debye-Sears effect, the diffraction of light by ultrasonic waves.^[3][4]

Sears was a Fellow of the Optical Society of America, and was active in the American Association of Physics Teachers, serving as its president in 1956.

Awards

• 1961 — Oersted Medal of the American Association of Physics Teachers

Books

• Sears, Francis; Mark Zemansky; et al. (1991). College Physics (7th ed.). Addison Wesley. 
• Sears, Francis (1958). Mechanics, Wave Motion, and Heat (1st ed.). Addison Wesley. 
• Sears, Francis W. (1935). An Introduction to Optics. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. 
• Francis W. Sears (1975). Thermodynamics, Kinetic Theory, and Statistical Thermodynamics. Addison Wesley. ISBN 020106894X. 
• Sears, Francis W. (1950). An Introduction to Thermodynamics, the Kinetic Theory of Gases and Statistical Mechanics. Addison Wesley. 
• Sears, Francis W. (1950). Mechanics, heat and sound. Cambridge, Massachusetts. Addison Wesley.
• Sears, Francis W. (1946). Electricity and Magnetism. Reading, Massachusetts. Addison-Wesley

See also

• MIT Physics Department

References