A Student's Guide to Waves
About The Authors
Dan Fleisch

Dr. Dan Fleisch is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Physics and Director of Weaver Observatory at Wittenberg University, where he specializes in electromagnetics and space physics. He is the author of the internationally best-selling book A Student’s Guide to Maxwell’s Equations, published by Cambridge University Press in January 2008 and translated into Japanese, Korean, Italian, and Chinese. Dr. Fleisch is also the author of A Student’s Guide to Vectors and Tensors, published by Cambridge Press in 2011, co-author of A Student’s Guide to the Mathematics of Astronomy, published in 2013, and author of A Student's Guide to the Schrödinger Equation, published in 2020, and A Student's Guide to Laplace Transforms, published in 2022. Dr. Fleisch is also the co-author with the late Prof. John Kraus of The Ohio State University of the McGraw-Hill textbook Electromagnetics with Applications.

Prof. Fleisch has published technical articles in the IEEE Transactions, The Journal of Atmospheric and Terrestrial Physics, and Microwave Journal, and has presented more than a dozen professional papers on topics related to high-speed microwave instrumentation and radar cross-section measurement. He has been a regular contributor of science commentary to PBS station WYSO of Yellow Springs, and in 2006 he appeared in the documentary "The Dayton Codebreakers" shown on Public Television. In 2009 he was the first U.S. citizen to receive an Arthur Award from Stuart McLean of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Prof. Fleisch was named Outstanding Faculty Member at the Wittenberg Greek scholarship awards in 2000, and in 2002 he won the Omicron Delta Kappa award for Excellence in Teaching. In 2003 and 2005 he was recognized for Faculty Excellence and Innovation by the Southwestern Ohio Council for Higher Education (SOCHE), and in 2004 he received Wittenberg’s Distinguished Teaching Award, the university’s highest faculty award.

In November of 2010 Prof. Fleisch was named the Ohio Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation and the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education, and in August of 2013 Prof. Fleisch was named one of the Top 25 Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Professors in Ohio.

Prof. Fleisch was named Series Editor for the Student's Guide Series at Cambridge University Press in 2018 and will serve as the Grand Canyon Astronomer in Residence in the fall of 2022.

Fleisch received his B.S. in Physics from Georgetown University in 1974 and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Space Physics and Astronomy from Rice University in 1976 and 1980, respectively.

To contact Dan Fleisch, send e-mail to dfleisch@wittenberg.edu

Laura Kinnaman

Dr. Laura Kinnaman is an Assistant Professor of Physics at Morningside College in Sioux City, IA. She previously taught for two years as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, IN. Kinnaman has presented conference posters and oral presentations on computer simulations of the properties and behavior of complex chemical systems, with an eye toward green energy production.

She has developed and taught a wide range of physics courses at Morningside and Wabash. She is invested in active learning classes, and has flipped the general physics course at Morningside. Kinnaman teaches waves concepts from the introductory level, in general physics and astronomy, to the advanced level, in quantum mechanics and dynamics.

Kinnaman introduces students to research methods by supervising undergraduate summer research. Projects include developing computer simulations and programming LEGO robots to perform various random walks.

Kinnaman received her B.S. in physics from Wittenberg University in 2005 and her Ph. D. in Physics from the University of Notre Dame in 2011. At Notre Dame she received the Kaneb Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant Award in 2011, a Graduate Summer Fellowship from the Notre Dame Center for Applied Mathematics in 2008, and was a Smith Fellow from 2008-2009.

To contact Laura Kinnaman, send e-mail to kinnamanl@morningside.edu