Foundations of Legacy: Chris Vuille

I applied to the Prescott Campus for a position of assistant professor in 1989, under the mistaken impression I was applying for a position at the Daytona Beach Campus. This was important because my wife, Dianne Kowing, is an optometrist and licensed in Florida but not in Arizona.

What a surprise when Mike Wolf, chair of the Math/Physical Sciences Department out in Prescott, called me to talk about the position. When I realized it was the wrong state, I apologized and turned the position down, instructing him to go after other candidates. At the time, I was looking for a position in Florida if possible, or maybe in the government or in private industry.

Three weeks later, Mike called back. They’d looked at three other candidates and still wanted me to come for an interview. I asked if they would pay my expenses. Mike said: “If you take the job, I think they’ll pay, but if you turn it down, I think you’ll have to pay.”  That almost ended the conversation, again. But he persuaded me I would like what I saw and might even like to stay. It’s a lot like Florida: big beaches, just no water! I went out and interviewed and I ended up taking the offer.

It was a great place to be! It didn’t work out for my wife, so the next year, when a position opened in Daytona, I ended up going back to Florida, where my wife had plenty of opportunities waiting for her.

Darrel Smith applied to replace me in Prescott, and I strongly recommended him, and he’s still there! He helped transform the university, build its new buildings, and create new programs.

New Beginnings in Daytona Beach

When I came to Embry‑Riddle's Daytona Beach Campus in 1990, it was almost entirely a teaching university with very little research. Some of us, including myself, got involved in a NASA Jove program, learning techniques of astrophysics that might be of interest in NASA grant programs. It was always difficult, because we had heavy teaching loads and further, had to make our research move forward.

It was interesting going to meetings at other universities and listening to people complain about teaching one course a year, for one semester, and how much time it took from their research! I maintained a research program, publishing a paper about every three years, on neutron stars, exact solutions to Einstein’s equations, and more recently my field theory — which may unite gravity and electromagnetism and predict a new electromagnetic scalar force.

Innovative Physics Research

In physics, I discovered, if you invent something new and fundamental on your own, your chances of success are very slim. I had a terrific background in pure math that most physicists don’t have, and my theory, first invented in 1987 in grad school, depended on it, and few could understand it. It was a big deal when an editor contacted me in early 2019 and expressed interest in a review paper on my field theory. That came as a result of my publishing an abstract in the annual APS conference.

I was so surprised I thought it was a scam and nearly deleted the invitation! I accepted the offer. I conducted furious calculations for the next year and a half, completing it with an idea I gleaned from Fred Elston’s dissertation. Fred was a long-time professor here and my best friend, now deceased, and I was very happy to make use of his ideas in my paper! Very few understand what he and his major professor developed. My paper appeared in August of 2020 and thus far has been downloaded almost 600 times — a very large number for a paper of this type.

In 2021, I received an award from the Southeast Section of the American Physical Society for my long years of work on physics education writing and publication, as I have been the responsible author of College Physics, Serway and Vuille, since 2002. Also stated in the award was the long series of Elston Memorial Lectures on Gravitation I had organized, following Fred’s passing away. Two years after that, I was promoted to full professor, spent the year working on my research on sabbatical, and just recently published a new paper on cosmologies predicted by my field theory.

Theories Upon Theories

It’s important to realize that at this level, no one knows what is really correct, so it takes some time to get a new idea, develop it and then somehow show it is a good way forward. My theory builds on Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which I call extended general relativity.

I aimed to prove it was not just a very interesting and attractive theory, but that it answered one or more of the big questions in physics: What is the inflaton that rapidly inflated the universe once it came into existence? What is dark energy, which continues the long-term inflation of the universe even today? And finally, what is dark matter, a material that holds a galaxy together, preventing it from hurling its stars into intergalactic space?

My most recent paper shows good chances of modeling the inflaton and dark energy, and in a new paper I am writing, I am trying to show the origin of dark matter. These forces derive from a new, generally very weak force delivered by ions, which are everywhere in the universe.

Teaching for Student Success

As far as students and teaching go, it has always been a great challenge. There are too many aids out there, and it seems that now ChatGPT and similar resources help students avoid the serious task of raising their level of education and their ability to solve physics problems.

If students use an aid to solve problems for them, unfortunately, it reduces their actual learning to their detriment. My goal is to make changes and create a methodology that will help them do what is right and therefore succeed. Physics does not take a genius IQ — for example, a close family relative of mine, with no interest in physics, made an A with regular application!