Lui, who was from Hong Kong, was the first woman to receive a PhD at Oregon State, earning a doctorate in physics in 1941. She also received an MS from OSC in 1937.
Washington, who is from Portland, received a B.S. in physics (1958) and an M.S. degrees in meteorology (1960) from Oregon State. He has spent his entire career at NCAR; through his work there, Washington has become an internationally renowned climate scientist focusing on climate modeling. He was awarded the National Medal of Science in 2010, has served as chair of the National Science Board, and received an honorary doctorate from OSU in 2006. He was also that year’s commencement speaker.
Willibald Weniger was born on 20 June 1884 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Weniger received B.A. (1905), M.S. (1906), and Ph.D. (1908) degrees from the University of Wisconsin. In 1908, he came to Oregon Agricultural College to organize and head the Physics Department. Weniger left the College in 1914 to work as a physicist in the Nela Research Laboratories of General Electric in Cleveland. During World War I he studied the relative merits of monocular and binocular field glasses for all except field artillery purposes. Weniger returned to OAC in 1920 as Physics Department head. In 1933 he became Assistant Dean of the Graduate Division and later served as Associate Dean and Dean before his return to the Physics Department in 1949. Weniger married Myrtle Elizabeth Knepper, a librarian, in 1918; their son, George Edward, was born in 1919. Weniger invented a transluscent blackboard and a typewriter attachment for typing Greek letters and mathematical symnbols. He died 14 March 1959 in Corvallis, Oregon. The Physics Building, completed that same year was named Weniger Hall in his honor.
Melvin Cutler was a professor in the Oregon State University Physics Department from 1963 until his retirement in 1988. Cutler earned his Ph.D. in chemistry from Columbia University in 1951 and was employed at the Hughes Aircraft Semiconducor Laboratory and the General Dynamics Company from 1951 to 1958 researching liquid semiconductors. Cutler specialized in the study of the electronic properties of molecular liquids and was particularly interested in the development of liquid semiconductors. Cutler died in Corvallis in 2005.