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Robert Cordery sits at the control panel of the decommissioned Hanford Nuclear Power Plant in Washington state. Photo courtesy of Cordery.

Today, I teach General Physics for Life Sciences, Physics of Light and Color, and two introductory physics labs at Fairfield University in Connecticut. I enjoy working with faculty colleagues at the university and in the physics department. In a relatively small school, I appreciate the interdisciplinary nature of the work. But I haven't always been a professor. 

After earning my PhD in theoretical statistical physics from the University of Toronto, I went on to a postdoctoral position at Rutgers University. There, my two office mates and I published a few papers on applications of the renormalization group in statistical physics. Afterward, I accepted a visiting assistant professor position at Northeastern University, where colleagues and I published on the Monte Carlo renormalization group in lattice gauge field theory. I also did some work on the quantum Fermi accelerator, a system whose classical version exhibits a transition to chaotic behavior.

In both positions I totally enjoyed the research and interactions. But my wife and I had two children by the end of my second postdoc, and there were no good prospects for a tenure-track position, so I took a position in the interdisciplinary research group at Pitney Bowes Inc. 

Initially, I didn’t understand why the shipping and mailing company wanted a physicist. During the interview, they asked me to give a talk about my research, so I presented my work on quantum chaos! They showed me some problems they had with an experimental inkjet printhead that printed on envelopes. I diagnosed a problem with the design based on some material properties. I got the job offer—and a career that lasted 30 years.

The research and development (R&D) group at Pitney Bowes included several physicists, mathematicians, chemists, and electrical, mechanical, and software engineers. They had a number of interesting projects going, and the position came with a substantial salary increase over my academic pay. I started as an intermediate engineer, but my title was soon senior physicist. Among my first projects were an inkjet printhead design, some paper-handling theory, and a magnetic electronic article surveillance system that included signal processing, antenna design, and soft-magnetic tag design. I also looked at other problems that had a mathematical aspect. When Pitney Bowes filed patent applications on several of these projects, I became an inventor. I also studied for and became licensed as a US patent agent.

Pitney Bowes had a technical career ladder that paralleled the management ladder up to vice president. Having no interest in management, I joined the technical ladder. As a mathematically oriented person, I got involved in its secure systems group and collaborated on some projects on secure protocols, secure devices, and cryptographic key management. The last projects I collaborated on before retiring from Pitney Bowes were data mining and natural language processing applications.

After retiring, I joined Fairfield University. Overall, I value my time in industrial R&D. I don’t view it as a consolation prize. I had a rewarding career, contributing to the development of several products and platforms. I worked in interdisciplinary teams on important projects with many talented people who remain good friends. As a semiretired physicist, I’m still developing new research interests. Of course, I sometimes wonder what my life would have been like if I had found that permanent academic position…

If you’re interested in industrial R&D, be sure to gain a broad working knowledge of the science and math behind new technologies. I never regretted any new mathematics I learned. More math gives you flexibility. The training to apply math to real-world problems is valuable in both industry and academia.