Dr. Howard J. Foster Biography

 

Dr. Howard J. Foster was born on Sept. 22nd, 1926, in Gadsden, Alabama. Dr. Foster was a 7th grade dropout. After serving in the armed forces Dr. Foster returned to the seventh grade at the age of 23. He attended college at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee where he graduated manga cum laude with a MS degree in Physics. In 1964 he received a PhD in physics from Catholic University of America with a special citation for academic performance.

Before AAMU, Foster held a position as a solid state physicist in the Institute for Material Research at the US National Bureau Of Standards. He also held consulting and part time professional positions with NASA and the Atomic Energy Commission. He held a visiting Professorship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Foster’s past work activity included teaching at the undergraduate and graduate levels in physics and mathematics; consulting in environmental sciences; work in atomic energy;environmental control (space program); missile vibration shielding; prospecting for mineral resources from outer space;defense against sophisticated missile attack(Safeguard);laboratory director for high-temperature studies of missile nose-cone materials and nuclear fuels;electron microscopy and diffraction;thin film and crystal growth, and theoretical and experimental studies of Fermi surfaces in metals.

Dr Foster, chairman of the department of physics and mathematics at Alabama A&M University, died on 23 January, 1973. At the time of his death foster was on the advisory board of Danforth Foundation, Trustee of the Roxbury Medical-Technical Institute of Boston, Massachusetts, and a member of the American Physical Society’s Committee on Minorities in Physics.

The first students to obtain a degree in mathematics and a minor in physics (class of 1968) were;

Nancy Fields
James Jennings
Joseph Jones
Ralph Redrick
Leon Walker

The first student to graduate with a major in physics was Michael Hartwell in 1971.