Franklin & Marshall College

May, 2002

SOCRATES CITATION

In Honor of

Michael A. Seeds

Professor of Physics & Astronomy

2002 Commencement

Franklin & Marshall College

Professor Seeds has been interested in astronomy and space exploration since the 6th grade in Danville, Illinois, when he joined a local "moon watch" team during high school to track the first artificial Earth satellites using surveyors' transits, binoculars and tape recorders. Professor Seeds joined the Franklin & Marshall faculty in 1970 after majoring in physics at the University of Illinois and receiving his Ph.D. in astronomy from Indiana University.

Professor Seeds’ job interview with Professor Joe Holzinger, at the time, F&M’s only astronomer, consisted of a discussion about what kind of telescope should be bought with a National Science Foundation Grant, and how to set it up next to our venerable 19th century Clark refractor in the then new observatory building on Baker campus.  In his first semester as an assistant professor, Professor Seeds supervised the installation of the new Boller & Chivens 16-inch reflecting  telescope.

Professors Seeds and Holzinger collaborated on a book, Laboratory Exercises in Astronomypublished in 1976, that seems to result in Professor Seeds being bitten by a writing bug.  Much of his scholarship energy in the following years was devoted to writing three very successful college-survey astronomy textbooks, Horizons (1st edition in 1980), followed by Foundations of Astronomy and then Astronomy:  the Solar System and Beyond. Revising his books for new editions is nearly a full-time job itself, as Professor Seeds' e-mail signature "sleep is for wimps" indicates, but his hard work has paid off.  For the last four years Horizons has been the best-selling college astronomy textbook in the country. Horizons  has also been made into an Emmy-award winning 26-hour video telecourse: "Universe - the Infinite Frontier" for which Professor Seeds was senior consultant.

Professor Seeds once had a side-line publishing educational software programs for Apple IIs. One of his programs that taught basic computer keyboard techniques back in the days when few people had seen a computer was purchased by the cloistered nuns at a convent in Texas, leading to an ongoing 20-year correspondence with the abbess Sister Mary Emmanuel.

His research in graduate school and afterwards focused on stellar evolution, particularly stages in the life cycle of stars which involve brightness variability, and improving techniques for accurately measuring such variability.  He published an annotated catalog and bibliography of one class of variable stars in 1972, now used as a standard reference by astronomers.  For the past 15 years he has operated the Phoenix-10 robot telescope located in southern Arizona - without ever having laid eyes on the telescope itself. Generations of F&M students have learned astronomy by helping Mike load target coordinates into the P-10 over the Internet and gather raw data each week.

In 1990 Professor Seeds was selected to receive the Lindback Distinguished Teaching Award.  He has served on the Professional Standards committee for four years and has chaired the astronomy program.

 Professor Seeds' retirement only means that he will be better able to concentrate on new editions of his textbooks, with occasional breaks for traveling with his wife, Janet, to the American southwest. We wish him the best of continued success and enjoyment.