Walter Mayer Graduate Fellowship in Experimental Physics

Established in 2013 by a generous gift from Dr. David Auth (G’69), the Walter Mayer Graduate Fellowship in Experimental Physics supports excellence in experimental research by physics graduate students.

Brief Biography of Walter Mayer

Walter Mayer

Walter Mayer joined the Georgetown physics department in 1965 after a number of years as a Research Assistant Professor in the Physics Department at Michigan State University, where he had received his PhD. Walter was promoted to Associate Professor in 1968 and Full Professor in 1972. He had a thriving research program in acoustics, with over 100 peer-reviewed journal articles. He was awarded the senior Humboldt-Prize in 1980/81 by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and the Medaille d’Argent in 1988 by the French Acoustical Society. Moreover, he was an outstanding teacher and research mentor to many graduate and undergraduate students in the department, as well as a gracious and admired colleague. Walter remained active in the department long after his retirement in 1996, serving as Associate Editor of the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America and as the secretary of the Association of Main Campus Retired Faculty. He passed away in 2011.

Brief Biography of David Auth

David Auth

David Auth received his PhD. in 1969 for his dissertation entitled Orthogonal photon-photon scattering with Walter Mayer as his advisor. He was a professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Washington for thirteen years before founding the Redmond, WA-based Heart Technology (selling the rotablator which clears blocked arteries), which he took public, and sold to Boston Scientific for $600 million in 1995. He was recognized as Inventor of the Year by the University of Washington in 2006.

Dr. Auth currently serves on the Boards of Directors of five medical device companies as well as the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience and on the Department of Bioengineering advisory board at the University of Washington where he is an affiliate professor. He has served on the boards of Integra LifeSciences, Novacept, and Radiotherapeutics. He is a certified professional electrical engineer (PE) in the State of Washington and is a Member of the National Academy of Engineering, and, a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.

Mayer Fellows