Professor Sam Gralla receives Blitzer Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Physics and Related Sciences

Congratulations to Professor Sam Gralla, who has been selected as the recipient of the 2024 Professor Leon and Pauline Blitzer Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Physics and Related Sciences!

Professor Gralla is well-known as an outstanding classroom instructor, mentor, and science communicator. His achievements in teaching and outreach complement his high-profile research program on gravitational physics and relativistic astrophysics. Professor Gralla's graduate courses PHYS 511 (Classical Mechanics) and PHYS 569 (General Relativity) are highly regarded among our students. The Blitzer Award committee was particularly impressed with Professor Gralla's teaching of PHYS 511. PHYS 511 is a foundational course that all graduate students take as soon as they arrive. Historically, this course has not been particularly popular, as it is traditionally a rather formulaic and highly mathematical study of old topics. Professor Gralla transformed PHYS 511 into something much more fun and engaging, writing his own set of notes (150+ typeset pages) that modernize the content, and inventing new homework problems and new in-class activities. His notes also fill a glaring gap in existing texts by giving a proper treatment of the general theory of constraints. His students love the topic -- they calculate how to parallel-park a car -- and students told Professor Gralla that it helped them see how all of mechanics fits together. Professor Gralla's lecture notes are destined to become a new standard textbook on graduate mechanics.

Given his excellence in teaching, it is no surprise that Professor Gralla is also an experienced and accomplished science communicator. He has made 15 public presentations during his 10 years as a professor, including small group presentations, large lectures, a pre-lecture for a movie screening, as well appearances on TV and radio. He has also done live-stream events on YouTube to discuss breaking physics news. Perhaps his most notable outreach contribution is his 2017 lecture "Space, Time and Gravity" in the College of Science lecture series, which received more than 400,000 views on YouTube, becoming the third most popular video ever uploaded by Arizona Public Media. Last year, he gave the beginning lecture "Surprised by Gravity: Black Holes and their Shocking Implications" in the 2024 College of Science lecture series, which attracted more than 1000 participants.

About the Blitzer Award:

The Professor Leon and Pauline Blitzer Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Physics and Related Sciences was established by the Blitzer children, Mimi and Charles, to honor the memory of their parents. The award comes with an honorarium from a fund endowed by contributions from family, friends, colleagues, and former students.

Professor Leon Blitzer began his nearly 70-year association with the University of Arizona in 1936 as a physics undergraduate student. He obtained his B.S. and M.S. at UA in 1938 and 1939, and his Ph.D. at Caltech in 1943. He returned to Tucson in 1946 as an Assistant Professor of Physics, and at the time was one of the few UA faculty to pursue research in addition to his teaching responsibilities. His research focused on spectroscopy, astrophysics and celestial mechanics. At the age of 33, he became the youngest full professor on campus.

Blitzer was devoted to teaching, both at the graduate and undergraduate level. In the early 1970’s, when one course per semester was the standard teaching load for faculty researchers, he always asked to teach at least two courses. He was the driving force behind starting the Ph.D. program in the department. After retiring in 1986, he remained active in the department for years, advising undergraduates and mentoring university physics teachers.