Alan Giambattista grew up in Nutley, New Jersey. In his junior year at Brigham Young University he decided to pursue a physics major, after having explored math, music, and psychology. He did his graduate studies at Cornell University and has taught introductory college physics in one form or another for the past 20 years. When not found at the computer keyboard working on College Physics, he can often be found at the keyboard of a harpsichord or piano. He is a member of the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra and has given performances of the Bach harpsichord concerti at several regional Bach festivals. He met his wife Marion in a singing group and presently they live in an 1824 former parsonage surrounded by a dairy farm. Besides music and taking care of the house, gardens, and fruit trees, they love to travel together.

Betty McCarthy Richardson was born and grew up in Marblehead, Massachusetts, and tried to avoid taking any science classes after eighth grade but managed to avoid only ninth grade science. After discovering that physics tells how things work, she decided to become a physicist. She attended Wellesley College and did graduate work at Duke University. While at Duke, Betty met and married fellow graduate student Bob Richardson and had two daughters, Jennifer and Pamela. Betty began teaching physics at Cornell in 1977. Twenty-five years later, she is still teaching the same course, Physics 101/102, an algebra-based course with all teaching done one-on-one in a Learning Center. From her own early experience of math and science avoidance, Betty has empathy with students who are apprehensive about learning physics. Betty's hobbies include collecting old children's books and vintage toys, reading, enjoying music, travel, and dining with royalty. Betty's highlight during the Nobel Prize festivities in 1996 was being escorted to dinner at the Stockholm Royal Palace on the arm of King Carl XVI Gustav of Sweden and sitting between the king and the prime minister. Currently she is spending spare time pushing wooden trains around wooden tracks with grandson Jasper (the 1-m child in Chapter 1) and caring for the family cats.

Robert C. Richardson was born in Washington, D.C., attended Virginia Polytechnic Institute, spent time in the United States Army, and then returned to graduate school in physics at Duke University where his thesis work involved NMR studies of solid helium-3. In the fall of 1966 Bob began work at Cornell University in the laboratory of David M. Lee. Their research goal was to observe the nuclear magnetic phase transition in solid 3He that could be predicted from Richardson's thesis work with Professor Horst Meyer at Duke. In collaboration with graduate student Douglas D. Osheroff, they worked on cooling techniques and NMR instrumentation for studying low temperature helium liquids and solids. In the fall of 1971, they made the accidental discovery that liquid 3He undergoes a pairing transition similar to that of superconductors. The three were awarded the Nobel Prize for that work in 1996. Bob is currently the F. R. Newman Professor of Physics and the Vice Provost for Research. He has been active in teaching various introductory physics courses throughout his time at Cornell. In his spare time he enjoys gardening and photography.

For Marion
Alan

In memory of our daughter Pamela and for Jasper, Jennifer, and Jim Merlis
Bob and Betty