Gary D. Westfall is an American experimental nuclear and high energy physicist and University Distinguished Professor at Michigan State University. He is also an author of the introductory calculus-based physics textbook University Physics, published by McGraw-Hill in 2010.
After his Ph.D. Westfall went to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, to conduct his post-doctoral work in high-energy nuclear physics and in 1977 stayed on as a staff scientist. While he was at LBNL, Westfall became internationally known for his work on the nuclear fireball model and the use of fragmentation to produce nuclei far from stability.
In 1981, Westfall joined the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory at Michigan State University as a research professor; there he conceived, constructed, and ran the MSU 4π Detector. His research using the 4π Detector produced information concerning the response of nuclear matter as it is compressed in a supernova collapse. In 1987, Westfall joined the Department of Physics and Astronomy at MSU as an associate professor, while continuing to carry out his research at NSCL. Since 1991 he has been serving as co-principal investigator on the NSCL cover grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation, which supports the operation of the NSCL. He was promoted to full professor in 1991, and in 2003 he was named university distinguished professor.
Westfall has taught university physics and astronomy classes on the undergraduate and graduate level since 1987. He is particularly interested in the introductory physics curriculum for engineering and science majors. For decades he has collaborated closely with his MSU colleagues Wolfgang Bauer and Walter Benenson. They obtained NSF funding to develop novel teaching and laboratory techniques, authored multimedia physics CDs for their students at MSU's Lyman Briggs College, and co-authored a textbook on CD-ROM, called cliXX Physik. In 1992, they became early adopters of the Internet for teaching and learning by developing the first version of their online homework system. In subsequent years, they were instrumental in creating the LearningOnline Network with CAPA, which is now used at more than 70 universities and colleges in the United States and around the world. Since 2008, Bauer and Westfall have been part of a team of instructors, engineers, and physicists, who investigate the use of peer-assisted learning in the introductory physics curriculum. This project has received funding from the NSF STEM Talent Expansion Program, and its best practices have been incorporated into their textbook University Physics, which was published in 2010 by McGraw-Hill.
Honors
Westfall was awarded the Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation Distinguished Senior U.S. Scientist Award in 2007. In 2002 he received the Distinguished Faculty Award from Michigan State University. He was elected fellow of the American Physical Society in 1999.
