George Alexandrakis Fuses Physics with Fun

Show and Tell

hat is the longest straw the Bionic Woman can use to drink Coca-Cola? George C. Alexandrakis, professor and chair of the Department of Physics in the College of Arts and Sciences, is leaning over the balcony of the James L. Knight Physics Building, finagling with the crude pump and hose that will reveal the answer. The presentation is a highly anticipated encore to last week’s lecture, when Alexandrakis hammered a nail using a banana frozen in liquid nitrogen. Following the fanfare he always asks, “Where is the beef?” meaning, what can we learn from this?

“In physics, students get a little tired of the mathematics and the arguments, and it’s hard for everybody, including the professor,” says Alexandrakis, recipient of the Faculty Senate’s 2002 Outstanding Teaching Award and the 2002 James W. McLamore Outstanding Service Award. “They get help when they see what you are talking about, and if they see something fancy, they’ll clap.”
 

 
Alexandrakis received applause at the very first lecture he gave while a graduate student at Princeton University. Born and raised in a village called Adele on the Greek island of Crete, he had been in the United States only one year and spoke little English. But he employed some advice from his mentor and teaching legend Eric Rogers: If you enjoy it, they will too.

“I have done many different things in my life, and I think good teaching is harder than all of them,” says Alexandrakis.

After the Nazis executed his father and grandfather and commandeered his home during World War II, Alexandrakis moved to his grandmother’s house, which was once the stomping grounds of a heroic great uncle who rebelled against the Turks in 1866. Ask Alexandrakis about his youth, and he’ll reach for a crinkled paper bag teeming with black and whites of him working on his uncle’s farm or selling vegetables on horseback. Though “selling tomatoes is hard because people try to cheat you,” a greater feat was earning a degree from the University of Athens, the first in his village to do so.

Alexandrakis attended Princeton after working for a research center in Greece and writing a book at age 22 on the then-emerging field of semiconductors. He joined the University of Miami in 1969. Political strife in Greece kept him in the United States, but like his vestigial accent, his homeland has remained part of him. In 1978, on leave from the University of Miami, he established a physics department at the new University of Crete. When the Greek government in 1982 tried to sabbotage faculty elections, Alexandrakis jumped on a plane and personally rallied the villagers. “That basically saved the university,” he says.

The University of Crete this year honored Alexandrakis, but of his many awards, he is most proud of one from his Physics 210 honors class in 2001. A miniature gilded cow stands on a plaque that reads: “Here’s the Beef! Professor Alexandrakis, your knowledge and caring will never be forgotten.”

— Meredith Danton