Tuthill portrait

Email: 
Phone: 603-535-3107
Fax: 603-535-257
420 Washburn Rd., Alexandria, 03222, NH

 

Biographical Sketch:

  • BA, Williams College, 1967
  • PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1975
  • Associate Dean, MSU College of Letters and Science, 2004-2006
  • Interim Dean, MSU College of Letters and Science, 2006-2007

Interests:

My physics research has focused on statistical mechanics and cooperative phenomena in condensed matter physics, especially involving electrically and magnetically active materials (e.g., ferroelectrics and ferromagnetics, piezoelectrics). This work has been computational and theoretical in character, but generally has been carried out in close collaboration with experimentalists.

In recent years my interests have increasingly included science education and outreach, and in particular creating new opportunities for K-12 teachers of science to engage in content-focused professional development. Since 1995 I have been closely involved with the National Teachers Enhancement Network (NTEN), a program of online teacher professional development courses. NTEN was initiated with a series of NSF grants and has recorded over 10,000 enrollments since its inception. A outgrowth of NTEN is MSU’s Master of Science in Science Education, which currently graduates roughly 50 students each year. I also work on education and public outreach teams for several NASA missions, including the MESSENGER space probe to Mercury, and the New Horizons probe to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt.

Selected Publications:

  • C.-S. Tu, F.-T. Wang, R.R. Chien, V.H. Schmidt and G.F. Tuthill, “Electric Field Effects of Dielectric and Optical Properties in Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)0.65Ti0.35O3 Crystal”, Journal of Applied Physics 97, 064112 (2005).
  • S.G. Lushnikov, S.N. Gvasaliya, A.I. Fedoseev, V.H. Schmidt, G.F. Tuthill, and L.A. Shuvalov, “Evidence for a Quasi-Two-Dimensional Proton Glass State in Cs5H3(SO4)4×xH2O Crystals”, Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 2838 (2001).
  • R.A. Stern and G.F. Tuthill, "Phase Transitions in the Sixteen-Vertex Model", Int’l. J. Mod. Phys. B15, 3331-3335 (2001).
  • V.H. Schmidt, G. Bohannan, D. Arbogast, G.F. Tuthill, "Domain Wall Freezing in KDP-Type Ferroelectrics", J. Phys. Chem. Solids 61, 283-289 (2000).
  • R.-M. Chien and G.F. Tuthill, "Director Configurations of a Nematic Microdroplet in a Ferroelectric Medium," Ferroelectrics, 156, 215 (1994).
  • Wei Huang, G.F. Tuthill, "Structure and Shape of Nematic Liquid Crystal Microdroplets," Phys. Rev. E49, 570 (1994).
  • G.F. Tuthill and W.A. Schwalm, "Biased, Interacting Self-Avoiding Walks on the Four-Simplex Lattice", Phys. Rev. B46, 13722 (1992).