Home • About • Calendar • People • Forum • Archive
April 26, 2007 • Volume 15 Number 16
Michael Naughton
A Man of Unbridled Enthusiasm
Physicist and speed-bowler supreme Mike Naughton says he worries about 'not knowing enough' - but judging by his track record it's clear he knows plenty
By Greg Frost
Chronicle Editor
In his relatively short career, Physics Department chairperson Prof. Mike Naughton has invented a tiny sensor that can detect plastic landmines. He has made significant contributions to physicists' understanding of superconductivity, authored or coauthored more than 150 journal publications, contributed chapters to a halfdozen books, and holds at least seven patents, with another dozen pending.
If that weren't enough, Naughton is part of a team of BC physicists trying to solve the world's energy problems by developing a highefficiency solar panel, via the startup company Solasta, Inc. Naughton wants to use that same technology to help treat certain types of blindness.
It's curious, then, that when his former thesis adviser, James Brooks, is asked to speak about Naughton and his achievements, one of the first things he brings up is...speedbowling. Speedbowling, as Brooks explains, uses roughly the same equipment as regular bowling: a bowling alley, a bowling ball, and pins. The emphasis, however, is not on aim but velocity; the goal is to simply hurl the ball down the lane as fast as possible.
Naughton indulged in the sport in the 1980s when he was working toward his PhD. Although he was a Boston University student, most of his research was done at what used to be the MIT magnet lab. Brooks recalls a series of very sensitive experiments at the magnet lab that involved switching on the big magnet ‚ a process that took some threequarters of an hour.
"We would start the experiment and then Mike and everyone else would disappear ‚ leaving me, the poor thesis adviser, wondering where they went," says Brooks, now a professor at Florida State University. "After 45 minutes or so, everyone would come back, smiling and a little sweaty," he adds. "I never knew what was going on until years later."
It turns out that during those 45 minutes, Naughton and his colleagues would run to the MIT Student Center and speedbowl, making it back to the lab in time to gather the incoming data. If the speedbowling anecdote suggests a playful side to Naughton, it also speaks to his creativity and mental energy ‚ assets held in high esteem by his colleagues.
"Unbridled, unbounded enthusiasm ‚ this is the essence of Mike Naughton," fellow Physics colleague Prof. Michael Graf says. "Apart from his obvious intellectual ability, he has critical enthusiasm and energy. That's why he's very good at what he does."
Brooks calls Naughton "a live wire" who is internationally known and very highly respected in the field.
"When he visits me down here in Florida, my students look at him in awe. He has a certain personality, gravitas, whatever ‚ he really turns heads," Brooks says. Naughton ó whose family background has the elements of a classic immigrant's success story ó may be a superstar in physics, but he doesn't let on to it in person. He maintains a modest tone when talking about himself, repeating a phrase that could be considered his personal mantra: the more you know, the more you realize how little you know.
"I always worry about not knowing enough," Naughton says. "I don't fret over it, I don't think I'm insecure over it, but I do know enough to know I don't know everything and I always could learn more." It's a saying that pops up often as he describes his career path. He says there was never a "eureka moment" in his childhood when he stood up and exclaimed "Aha! I'm going to be a scientist." Instead, he drifted into the sciences, graduating from St. John Fisher College (where he also played college hockey) in his hometown of Rochester, NY, with a bachelor's degree in physics ‚ one of only three such majors in his graduating class.
"After graduation, I knew enough to know that I didn't know anything," Naughton says. It was that realization that led him to pursue his PhD, and it's been driving him ever since. Naughton's specialty is condensed matter physics, and within that field he focuses on the behavior of electrons when they are confined. As part of his research, he uses large magnetic fields to disturb and control the motion of electrons. This explains why his lab in the basement of Higgins Hall features a device capable of generating a magnetic field a million times the size of the Earth's own magnetic field. It is this kind of machine that helped him score what he considers his biggest professional achievement: the theorybusting discovery that organic superconductors can survive in much stronger magnetic fields than had been predicted. The finding, which came about a decade ago when Naughton worked at SUNYBuffalo, challenges the notion that superconductivity and magnetism cannot coexist.
Naughton and colleagues discovered the odd phenomenon while experimenting on an organic superconductor called TMTSF. It's a substance that remains at the center of his research at BC.
"In addition to being the most interesting material in the world, I also like to say it's the most useless material in the world," Naughton says, noting that he is only partly joking.
"All the interesting stuff involving TMTSF happens under these strained conditions of strong magnetic fields and ultralow temperatures, and so you're not going to be able to use it to power a car or float a train."
It may not have any practical applications for now. But Naughton says it could be adapted in the notsodistant future to nanoelectronics or quantum computing. The TMTSF finding may represent his crowning professional achievement, but he says it pales when compared to his top personal concern: his family. Naughton was still living in Boston when he met his future wife, Peggi, during a trip home to Rochester in the 1980s. ("I was home for Thanksgiving and met her out in a club or something.") The pair began dating and married in 1988. They have two daughters, one of whom is pursuing her undergraduate degree at BC. Naughton comes from a large Irish family, and he credits his parents with instilling the kind of commonsense values in him, his four brothers and three sisters that has driven them to be successes in their chosen fields.
"It's amazing how well you can do with a good family and common sense," he says. "I'm not the smartest person in the room Ö but I know I can make contributions and I attribute almost all of that to simple common sense given to me by my parents."
Naughton's father, who passed away last year, emigrated from Co. Roscommon, Ireland, at the age of 21. He first arrived in Canada with $1 in his pocket and made his way to Toronto before settling in Rochester, where he started what would eventually become a successful plastering business that Naughton's eldest brother Kevin runs today.
A few years ago, Naughton and his brothers purchased the land in Roscommon where his father grew up to keep it in the family and out of the government's hands. They now lease the land ‚ about 43 acres ‚ to a neighbor who uses it to graze cattle, and periodically Naughton and his brothers return and stay in the same house where his dad lived.
Irish roots played a role in luring Naughton here from SUNYBuffalo in 1998, but for him the bigger attraction was the opportunity to be part of a department that was aggressively growing. Naughton credits much of this to his predecessor, Rourke Professor of Physics Kevin Bedell, now BC's vice provost for research, who nearly doubled the Physics faculty during the decade in which he helmed the department.
Nearly a decade after Naughton arrived at BC, the University is girding for another science expansion as part of the soontobeunveiled strategic plan.
Naughton says BC has experienced growing pains as it balances the value of excellence in science with the cost. But he says the momentum is there ‚ as evidenced by the surge in sponsored research in recent years ‚ and he expresses hope that the University will build an integrated science center and hire more science faculty as part of its strategic plan.
"BC has developed an extraordinary reputation, based on its undergraduate liberal arts background and its highly successful professional schools. Many of us contend that much of what it needs to fully realize its potential is science," he says.
"It's a fabulous time to be young and interested in science ‚ the sciences are finding new ways of integrating that are leading to all kinds of discoveries in technologies relevant to the human condition," he adds. "We owe it to our students to excel in the sciences as well, and that means science research and education at all levels." •