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 < back to authors list Jerry Wilson:
Though he has been retired from teaching for 17 years, Jerry Wilson continues to educate students through his textbooks. Wilson authored or co-authored nine textbooks during his academic career, three of which are still in print. In June 2009 TAA honored Wilson with a McGuffey Longevity Award for the 12th edition of An Introduction to Physical Science, published by Cengage Learning. (The book was originally published by Ohio University in 1969 and then picked up by D.C. Heath, which published the first national edition in 1971.) “When I graduated from high school, I wanted to go to college but couldn’t afford it so I went into the Army,” said Wilson. “When I got out in 1959, I was accepted at Ohio University. I started in December and paid $120 for my first semester’s tuition. After that I got a full-tuition scholarship, which I really needed. I never had to pay a cent again. My employer General Electric paid for my masters, and I had a teaching assistant scholarship for my doctorate.” Wilson knew from the start that he wanted to study science, though he wasn’t sure which field. “That was during the Kennedy years,” he said. “The race to the moon was going on, and there was a lot of demand for people with degrees in the sciences. I was thinking about chemistry, but then I took a calculus course and got fascinated by math integration and the kinematic equations used in physics. I said to myself, ‘I’m going to look into this,’ and that’s how I ended up in physics.” As a graduate student he taught as a substitute for one of his professors, and later served as a part-time faculty member in physical science, mostly teaching meteorology and geology. When one of his professors who was involved in co-authoring a physical science text was appointed department chair and became too busy to work on the book, he asked Wilson to take over. That book was An Introduction to Physical Science, now in its 12th edition. “I’m 72, but the contract is good for the 13th and 14th editions, so I can’t stop,” he said. “I still enjoy working on it.” After five years at Ohio University, Wilson was hired by Lander University in Greenwood, South Carolina, where he worked for 17 years. As chair of the Science Department at Lander, Wilson was in charge of biology, chemistry, physics, math, and computer science. His own courses included physics and physical science. While at Lander, Wilson worked on eight more textbooks. “Once I had my foot in the door I would approach publishers, or they would approach me about different books,” he said. He wrote An Environmental Approach to Physical Science, published in 1974 by D.C. Heath, in response to a demand for books on that subject at the time. While that book went out of print, two other books Wilson wrote have gone on to multiple editions. College Physics, first published in 1990 by Addison-Wesley, is now in its seventh edition. The seventh edition of his Physics Laboratory Experiments, is now being published by Cengage Learning with a 2010 copyright. His most recent project was a supplemental booklet titled, “Astronomy Update,” for An Introduction to Physical Science that covers recent developments in astronomy. While the booklet helps to keep the book current, it also serves as a promotional tool as well as a way for him to remain up-to-date on current issues in physical science, he said. “Astronomy is one of those areas that is being altered by new discoveries almost daily,” said Wilson. “We had one of the first books to announce the demotion of Pluto to a dwarf planet, but since then it has been reclassified as one of three plutoids, and this is only one of many changes.” Life can be hectic when he is revising two textbooks at once, he said, but one way he keeps all the materials for both books separate is to maintain two different offices: “I have a computer in each office and a laptop, and they are all networked. Nevertheless, I prefer to sit at the table and scratch out my writing longhand.” And though he used to have a secretary, he now types everything himself. “I do occasionally compose at the computer, but I like to write up the side of the page, which you can’t do on the computer,” he said. Constantly on the look-out for material to update his books, Wilson subscribes to ten science and news magazines—ranging from Discover and Popular Science to Business Week—and three daily newspapers. He goes through them for new information that will be of help in keeping his books up-to-date, and when he finds something he tears it out and puts it in a file folder, he said. He also gathers a great deal of information from the Internet. Reflecting the same delight in knowledge and understanding that originally attracted him to physics, Wilson has also been writing a column on for his local newspaper for the past 27 years. The column, was originally titled, “The Science Corner,” but was later changed to “The Curiosity Corner” when he expanded the scope of topics. In each column, which now appears in four other regional newspapers, he answers readers’ questions—with humor and brevity—on everything from the causes of global warming to how Dalmatians came to be firehouse dogs. An archive of his columns can be found at http://www.curiosity-corner.net. Though retired from teaching for many years now, Wilson stays connected to his work at Lander University through two full-tuition scholarships named the Jerry D. Wilson Excellence in Science Scholarship. One provides a scholarship for a student in physical science and one provides a scholarship for a student in math and computer science. “Having benefitted so much from the scholarships I received, I decided to do the same for others,” he said. “As with my books, I hope to stimulate student interest and help students gain knowledge in the physical sciences.” — David Cole is a freelance writer and publishing professional in Pt. Richmond, California. |
