FRANCES HELLMAN

Explore & Discover with Frances Hellman:
Magnetism

In Her Words

I got interested in physics back in high school when I took a concept-based physics class from a woman who was getting her PhD at the same time as she was teaching high school physics. I loved it. I thought I had figured out how the universe began, and my teacher encouraged this sort of creative exploratory thinking. Then I got to college and it seemed that physics was not what I had in mind at all, but seemed to be about pretty boring, and mathematically hard--stuff like how fast a block slides down an inclined plane. It took me a while, and required the help from some great professors, to realize that physics really is about having great ideas but that you need to understand what is known about the universe before you can really find out if your ideas make sense. Now I can honestly say that I love what I do. I still love to listen to people talk about ideas of how the universe started, but my own work in magnetic materials and semiconductors is at least as fascinating. Physics really is fun!

I am an experimental physicist, which means I work in a laboratory and make materials (hopefully new and exciting ones that no one has ever made before) and then measure their properties. My dream is to discover a material with a brand new property that no one has ever seen before, like Kamerlingh Onnes did when he discovered superconductivity. I work with lots of people, including undergraduates doing honors projects, graduate students getting their master's degrees or PhDs, and post-doctoral researchers who already have their PhDs and are working with me for two to three years before getting a permanent job themselves. I also work with lots of other senior scientists, including professors here at UCSD from Physics, Chemistry, and Electrical Engineering and people from all over the world. I teach lots of different classes, everything from introductory physics classes to senior level specialized topics classes. Some of these classes have hundreds of students, some have only 10 or so. I love interacting with students of all levels, trying to help them understand and see how beautiful physics can be. My work is actually a balance between very fundamental science, like looking for this new as-yet undiscovered material, and experiments that are relevant to industrial applications, so the students I work with end up going on to all kinds of jobs after they leave here. As a professor, I love the balance in my job between teaching students and discovering new science.

Outside of my scientific life, I am an avid soccer player and play soccer about three times per week on two San Diego adult women's soccer teams. I grew up as an athlete (in high school I was a nationally ranked downhill ski racer) and athletics have always been important to me. I am married to a wonderful man who is also a scientist, so we have to try hard to not let science completely take over our personal lives! We both scuba dive, and try to take a trip each year to some exotic place to go diving. We also love going to the movies, to the theater, and are avid Padres fans, so we go to as many baseball games as we can. We are hoping for another trip by the Padres to the World Series sometime soon!!

Contact Frances Hellman at fhellman@ucsd.edu.