People named Otto Laporte

Prof.( of Physics)Otto Laporte studied in Munich with Arnold Sommerfeld(at the time Germany's leading theoretical physicist) Fellow students were Werner Heisenberg and Wolfgang Pauli plus others who would be giants in the development of Quantum Mechanics(QM) He came to UMichigan in the 1920s. During my first year of graduate school at UM, I was a student in his Mathematical Physics(MP) course. He had a tart tongue and did not suffer fools gladly. Rather than being insulted, the victims of his 'zings' took them as a badge of honor (O that todays 'snowfakes' could have such an attitude). One of the requirements of the course was that we were write up notes(ONE side of the page only) and collect them into a booklet. Which would be graded. Although I understood the rationale of only one side(room to extend notes as one became more familiar with a topic), it did seem like a waste of a lot of paper. So I considered making all of my sheets into Möbius bands(which have only ONE side) and interleaving them to form my booklet. I know he would have had a chuckle at my inventiveness-----but then probably flunked me. Since I had an A in the course, I took the path of caution. He was of age 58 and recently widowed at the time of the course. His good friend Donald Glaser had just won a Nobel Prize for his invention of the Bubble Chamber( the idea for which he claimed he got from observing bubbles of beer at a local watering hole). He was of age 40 and his student girl friend was 23(dating one's student had not yet been banned). Since Glaser was to be on Sabbatical the next year, he asked Laporte to look after her. That he did and then some. He married her. About a year later I was a grader for Prof. Laporte in both MP and QM and thus had permission to call him at home. His young wife monitored calls. When I called and told her my business, I heard her call out "Oh Honey. It's your grader" I was taken aback. For all his age, primness and tartness, I had never thought of him as being an 'Oh Honey' As I later learned in my own Faculty days, students don't think of their Profs as real people with real lives. One day after returning graded tests in both MP and QM, I waited outside his open door as he tried to bring to enlightenment the student who had the lowest grade on each of the tests. But the road was bumpy. Very bumpy. After the student left. I commented on his seeming thickness. To which Laporte replied "Ach! He vas so dumb I vas going to offer him my pen as a stiletto to drive into his heart". Tart or What. The Ach and vas's were pure affectation. He spoke English very well and without accent. A couple of days after graded tests in QM had been returned, I again was outside his open door while a student pleaded for a higher grade in the course. He said the source of his poor performance was the lack of study time due to preparation for his marriage that was to occur 2 days hence. Laporte pointed out to him that the Final Exam schedule was known months ago and perhaps he should have set his wedding day accordingly. And now the student put his foot into it, saying(in a haughty tone yet) "My marriage meant more to me than this course". I saw redness rise from beneath Laporte's collar and explode over his face. In a fit of anger, he leaped to his feet, with his finger jabbing and him shouting "YOU SAID IT. YOU SAID IT" The student quickly exited the office and headed down the hallway with Laporte close behind still jabbing and shouting until the student went out the door to the floor below. Laporte turned sharply back and ,with his anger slaked and his composure regained returned to his office. Not a word was said and we conducted our business. But I was extremely cautious not to rouse him in any way. For the Final in MP, I was asked to help proctor and also to grade booklets due at that time. They ranged in quality from beautifully done to barely acceptable. Save for one case in which the booklet had only 5 pages. I sought his guidance on how to grade it. Instead he took the booklet in hand, walked back and interrupted the test taking of the young woman who was the booklet's author and began to speak very sternly to her. This included an ultimatum on when the booklet needed to be completed. But then, with booklet still in hand, he walked back shaking his head and with a look of disbelief on his face. "She said she won't do it" he told me. Now he began to ponder his response. "How am I going to project being a kind venerable Professor if I Fail her and with her parents down from the Upper Peninsula she is not able to graduate". What he eventually did I do not know. Es Macht Nichts. However, he had no knowledge of her possibly being from the UP or I actually being from the UP. I realized the UP was just his idea of the total Boondocks. Like saying someone is a hillbilly. For all his gruffness and tartness. I admired him very much. And he did give me a glowing recommendation when I applied for my University position.

Otto Laporte of Ann Arbor, Washtenaw County, Michigan was born on July 23, 1902, and died at age 68 years old in March 1971.