Wesley O. Doggett

Wesley Osborne Doggett, 82, peacefully passed away on Sunday, December 22, 2013, at his home in Raleigh, NC. He was an Eagle Scout and Reidsville High School graduate. While a senior at NC State, he decided to double major in engineering. He took 27 credit hours of 400-level classes in a single semester, all in absentia due to his military commitments and earned a perfect 4.0 grade point average. He received dual BS degrees from NC State in Nuclear Engineering (1952 with High Honors) and Electrical Engineering (1953, in absentia). Dr. Doggett received the NC State Physics Department's Outstanding Student Award in 1952 and was selected to be the "Outstanding Engineering Senior" in Electrical Engineering.

Professor Doggett was awarded two of the first pre-doctoral fellowships by the newly created National Science Foundation that supported his initial graduate studies at University of California at Berkeley during 1952-54. He earned his Master's and Ph.D. in Physics from UC-Berkeley in three and one-half years. He studied under four Nobel Prize Laureates, Professors Luis Alvarez, Emilio Segré, Owen Chamberlain, and Edwin McMillan, in addition to Professor Edward Teller. During 1956-58, he served as a commissioned officer with the Air Force Nuclear Engineering Test Reactor project office at the Wright Air Development Center at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio. He became its Technical Project Coordinator and received the Air Force Commendation Medal in 1957. In 1958 he joined the Physics Department at NC State, became a full professor in 1962, served as Assistant Dean of Physical and Mathematical Sciences College from 1964-1968, and retired as Professor Emeritus of Physics in 1993. After retiring, he was an associate editor of the Cornelius Lanczos Collected Published Papers with Commentaries (1999).

Professor Doggett was a member of the NC State's Academy of Outstanding Professors. Professor Doggett was known for his research in plasma physics at NC State. However, what he enjoyed most was teaching.