Jim Gates and John Toll enjoyed the comments of physics department chair, Steve Wallace, at the granting of the John S. Toll Professorship in Physics to Gates.

Sylvester James Gates, a physics professor at Maryland, was inaugurated as the first John S. Toll Professor in Physics at a 1998 Rossborough Inn reception. During formal remarks, both Gates and Toll delighted family, friends and faculty with their enthusiasm for education, their appreciation of the excellent research in physics at Maryland, and their warm admiration for each other.

Gates also said, "The endowment will allow me to increase my support of the efforts of young people who are interested in pursuing studies in theoretical physics and to concentrate on original research not anticipated by collective wisdom in the field. The Toll Professorship is the dream-come-true that a researcher can not imagine happening."

John S. Toll

A Maryland Leader

John Toll is a physicist, scholar, educator and entrepreneurial leader. Among his many achievements was building the Maryland physics department from a small one to one of the largest and finest in the nation.

After earning a B.S. degree with highest honors in physics from Yale in 1944, Toll served in the Navy during WWII. In 1952 he completed his Ph.D. in physics at Princeton where he helped establish what is now the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. In 1953 he became chair of Maryland's physics department, which was broadened to create the astronomy program. Thirteen years later he left to take over the presidency of the State University of New York at Stony Brook. In 1978 he returned, first as President and later as Chancellor of the expanded University of Maryland system.

Toll was a Guggenheim Fellow, has held leadership roles in dozens of organizations, and has received national and international honors and honorary degrees. He pioneered the establishment of relations between the Sate of Maryland and China as one of the first university presidents to visit China in the 1970's.

In physics he is recognized as a leader in developing the modern approach to dispersion theory and its application to problems on elementary particle physics.

The Board of Regents conferred upon Toll the status of Chancellor Emeritus. He currently serves as President of Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland, and as a part-time physics faculty member in CMPS.

Jim Gates

The First John S. Toll Professor

Jim Gates is well-known for his important work exploring the concept of string or superstring theory which may one day allow scientists to understand a unified theory of all forces.

Gates earned BS degrees in mathematics and physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His Ph.D., also from MIT, was in elementary particle physics and quantum field theory. His thesis was the first at MIT devoted to supersymmetry. Following two years on the MIT faculty, he came to Maryland in 1984. A 1991 to 1993 leave took him to Howard University where he was a professor and chair of the physics department.

He has been president of the National Society of Black Physicists and is the recipient of many awards. Gates has advised the National Science Foundation, U. S. Departments of Energy and Defense, the Educational Testing Service, and Time Life Books. Last year he was the scientific commentator for a White House/C-SPAN/BBC Internet broadcast with British physicist Stephen Hawking. He has been featured in two PBS series and is currently consulting on a PBS documentary.