About Art Hobson

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​I started life in Philadelphia in 1934. We moved to Manhattan, Kansas, in 1946, where I developed a passion for jazz trombone. I received a Bachelor of Music degree from U North Texas, Denton in 1955, was drafted and served in Army bands in Europe during 1955–57, searched for work in New York City, and decided to switch fields to physics (it's a long story).  I obtained my BS in 1960 and my itheoretical physics PhD in 1964 from Kansas State U in 1964, and then joined the physics faculty at U Arkansas in Fayetteville, where I remain.  I raised two children as a single father, married Marie Riley in 1997,  and have two grandchildren and a great grandchild.  Although retired since 1999, I still pedal my bicycle to the university every day and am as busy as ever.  

My publications include over 200 papers and 5 books: "Concepts in Statistical Mechanics" (research monograph), "Physics and Human Affairs" (textbook), "The Future of Land-Based Strategic Missiles" (arms control study), "Physics: Concepts and Connections" (textbook, 5 editions), and "Tales of the Quantum" (non-technical, popular).  In 1985, I spent a 6-month sabbatical leave doing arms control research at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.  I served 9 years as editor of the quarterly "Physics and Society," won the College of Arts and Science's Master Teacher Award in 1989, was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society “for numerous contributions in physics and society” in 1993, and received the Am. Assoc. of Physics Teachers' Millikan Award for "notable and creative contributions to the teaching of physics” in 2006.  I write a regular op-ed column about topics at the science/society interface for four Northwest Arkansas newspapers.

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Around 1970 I developed a new kind of physics course for non-science college students, emphasizing social topics (global warming, pseudoscience, nuclear weapons, etc.) and modern physics (special and general relativity, quantum physics, high energy physics).  The course quickly grew to nearly 1,000 students per year where it has remained.   I published two textbooks for this course.  The second textbook's 5 editions were used on some 130 campuses during two decades.    

Since retirement at age 64 in 1999, I have had time to indulge my interest in quantum foundations, publishing several papers and a popular book "Tales of the Quantum" (Oxford, 2017).  My two most important papers are "There are no particles, there are only fields" (2013) and "Entanglement and the measurement problem" (2022).