Robert Mallik discovered his passion for physics by disassembling and rebuilding his childhood toys in England, a View-Master and electric car racetrack among his early projects.
First project that stumped him? Figuring out how an analog bathroom scale worked — and why it needed an electrical circuit. He figured it out two years later when he enrolled in his first physics class as a 14 year old.
Mallik’s circuitous academic path took him from De Montfort University in England to the University of Akron, then back to England for additional studies at Cambridge University before heading back to the University of Akron, his home for the past 37 years. For a dozen of those years, he’s also served as the chair of the physics department.
Over the years, he’s watched students land jobs on Wall Street as well as in the telecommunications and healthcare industries.
He said a fledgling movement in academia combines physics with marketing and business, providing a strong background in the scientific process while providing students a career pathway that’s not necessarily STEM-related.
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“That’s what you do in physics,” Mallik, 64, said. “There’s some kind of problem you break down to the simplest possible pieces and try to solve it, then build it back up again.”
Now, Mallik spends a lot of time thinking about how to build inquiry-based physics curricula, which encourages students to ask questions and form their own experiments. He’s also teaching Music, Sound & Physics, which teaches the properties, perception and reproduction of sound.
It dovetails nicely with his childhood dreams of joining a rock band. He’s a fan of Queen and Led Zeppelin but never got too into the American hair metal of the era. (He played two gigs in English pubs before that dream faded, but nowadays, he still finds time to tinker on his electric guitar.)
For now, Mallik strums on, despite knowing in the coming weeks that the university’s physics department — and his job — could disappear as part of cost-cutting efforts.