Sunday, June 28, 2009
Raymond Ammar, professor of physics who passed away last week, was remembered for his love of classical music. His favorite composer was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, so when family, friends, colleagues and students gathered at Trinity Episcopal Church Friday afternoon to honor his life, the service preludes and postlude included Mozart’s “Ave Verum” and “Exsultate, Jubilate.”
The Rev. Paul McLain III spoke to the congregation about Ammar’s love of compositions from the great classical masters. He said Ammar believed in classical music’s eternal quality of uniting people.
One of Ammar’s students also remembered his enthusiasm for classical music.
“I was hoping they were going to play something like Mozart,” said Meghan Park, Overland Park sophomore, Park took Ammar’s honors physics I course last fall and remained in touch with him throughout the academic year. She said all of the students in the class were fond of him.
Park said she visited Ammar in his office two to three hours a week to discuss music, religion and philosophy, while sometimes listening to music by Mozart or Johann Sebastian Bach, her favorite composer. She has played classical violin most of her life and said it was fun for her to talk to Ammar because she did not have many friends her age who were interested in classical music.
Occasionally they would even talk about her relationships.
“He always told me I could have anyone I wanted and not to settle,” Park said. “He wanted me to find happiness.”
Park said she learned more in Ammar’s class than in any other class she had taken at the University. She said his ability to engage students inspired her to change her major from math to physics.
For Logan Wille, Lawrence sophomore, Ammar was a “compassionate and supportive” professor who challenged his students. Wille said Ammar was unique in that he did not just explain physics, but did it in a stimulating way.
Wille said he “aced” Ammar’s class, but when a friend of Wille’s grandparents asked Ammar how Wille was doing in class, Ammar replied, “Sorry, that’s confidential information.”
“Most professors, you know of their star pupil, would say, ‘Oh yeah, he’s doing great! He’s getting As on all my tests!’ He had such good standards about how he conducted himself. It was sort of bizarre, but it was funny,” Wille said.
Wille said the University’s physics program owed a lot to Ammar. He said that Ammar, as chairman of the physics department from 1989 to 2003, rebuilt the department by increasing research funding and recruiting top professors.
Wille said that as he looked through the crowd during the service, he saw many professors who he thought were at the University because of Ammar.
Alice Bean, professor of physics, came to the University in fall 1993. She said Ammar’s recruiting efforts allowed for more research funding to come to the University.
“Ray respected good physicists and believed that physicists enhanced the reputation of an institution. So by recruiting good physicists, the institution has benefited,” Bean said in an email.
Bean said Ammar always wanted to help faculty members attract graduate students to help with their research. She said he was known to spend a lot of time helping students with homework.
Sometimes he would combine his love of Mozart and teaching. Park said that one time in class he compared physics to music by showing how the waves on the strings of an instrument could create various combinations of sounds.
“We talked about pieces we liked and what they meant,” Park said. “He seemed to know his stuff. I think he knew a lot more than I did even though he never played an instrument.”
— — Edited by Ross Stewart
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