Eugene Hecht
Eugene Hecht (born 2 December 1938 in New York City) is an American physicist and author of a standard work in optics. Hecht studied at New York University (B.S. 1960) and Rutgers University (M. Sc. 1963). During his graduate study he worked at Radio Corporation of America. Adelphi University hired Hecht to teach and he became professor in 1978. Hecht challenged the notion of potential energy in 2003. The elusive nature of a universal definition of energy was argued by Hecht in a letter to the editor of "The Physics Teacher" in 2004. Then in 2006 he wrote  There is no really good definition of mass. He continued with the topic in 2011 and 2016. Eugene Hecht is also widely published authority on George E. Ohr and American art pottery and a founding member of the American Ceramic Arts Society. Books. His first textbook on optics was co-authored with Alfred Zajac, a colleague at Adelphi, in 1974 In 1975 Hecht wrote the text "Theory and Problems of Optics" for Schaum's Outlines. In 1977 he began writing about polarization. For the second edition of "Optics" in 1987 Hecht was the sole author. A third edition was published  in 1998, and the fourth in 2001. Brooks/Cole published "Physics:Calculus" in 1996 in which reviewers "found something intriguing on every page". Hecht contributed to a celebrationof potter George Ohr after his workshop was consumed in fire.