Leonard V. Cherry

Emeriti Faculty

 Dr. Cherry retired in 1989.  He and his wife, Betty, live in California, close to their family.  

Socrates Citation, 1989

Leonard V. Cherry

 

   Leonard Cherry, Professor of Physics, is a man of integrity and principle, with a strong commitment to personal freedom.  His favorite subject in the classroom is the statistical science of thermodynamics in which the properties of particles are measured in the aggregate: wellbeing of each individual.

 

   Leonard Cherry was born in Los Angeles, but grew up in New York.  His education interrupted by wartime service in the Philippines and Japan, took him first into electrical engineering, then chemistry.  He participated in early research on xerography at the Battelle Memorial Institute, completed his Ph. D. at Duke University, and went to teach physical chemistry for four years at the Hampton Institute in Virginia.  He moved to do research at the University of Pittsburgh, where he developed an enduring interest in the crystal structures and magnetic properties of metal alloys.  With his broad background, he came to Franklin and Marshall College to teach physics in 1961

 

   A devoted patient and resourceful teacher, Leonard Cherry has led generations of students through a wide range of introductory and advanced courses in physics.  His interdisciplinary and his attention to the needs and motivation of his students led him to initiate the development of a biophysics option oriented toward biology majors, within the introductory physics sequence.  he also played an important part in the establishment and development of the 3/2 Engineering Program.

 

   Leonard Cherry's research, often conducted with his students, has focused on the use of the Mossbauer Effect to study magnetic coupling in iron-germanium and other alloys.  More recently, he has collaborated with colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania and in England on studies of the electrical and mechanical properties of bone.  H has reported on the results of this work in papers given in China and an international symposium on biomaterials.

 

   Now chairing his department for the third time, Leonard Cherry has served the College in many other important ways, notably as a member of the Academic Council, in the planning of Pfeifer Science building, and through his active concern for the education of minority students.  A participant in the 1965 voting-rights march from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery.  He drew on his experience at the Hampton Institute to recruit black students for the College and he served for several years on the Committee on Minority and Women's Affairs, of which he was co-chair.

 

   Considerate and supportive of his colleagues, ever eager to help his students grasp the abstractions of modern physics, committed to the values we cherish as a liberal arts college.  Leonard Cherry has earned our respect and our gratitude for his contributions to the life and work of this institution.