John S. Rigden

John S. Rigden is currently an Honory Professor of Physics at Washington University in St. Louis. He received his B. S. from Eastern Nazarene College and his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. Upon completion of his graduate work he was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University. He has served on the faculties of Eastern Nazarene College, Middlebury College, and the University of Missouri-St. Louis. In 1987 he joined the American Institute of Physics where he served as Director of Physics Programs. Rigden’s scholarly work has been in the areas of molecular physics and the history of science.

Rigden’s professional activities have been at the national and international levels. He was editor of the American Journal of Physics from 1975 to 1985. In 1992 he was the Director of Development of the National Science Standards Project at the National Academy of Sciences. In 1995 he was elected chairman of the History of Physics Forum of the American Physical Society. He has served on numerous committees of the American Association of Physics Teachers, the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the National Academy of Sciences. He served as an NSF consultant to India in 1968 and 1969. He was the United States Representative to the International Science Exhibition in Rangoon Burma in 1970, a Fulbright Fellow to Burma in 1971 and to Uruguay in 1975.

Rigden is the author of Physics and the Sound of Music (John Wiley), Rabi: Scientist and Citizen (Basic Books), and Hydrogen: The Essential Element (Harvard). He has edited Most of the Good Stuff, Memories of Richard Feynman as well as several collections including the Macmillan Encyclopedia of Physics and the Macmillan Encyclopedia of Elementary Particle Physics where he served as Editor-in-Chief.

Currently he is co-editor (with Roger Stuewer) of the scholarly journal, Physics in Perspective, published by Birkhäuser Publishing in Basel, Switzerland.

Rigden is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Physical Society. He holds an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Denison University.