List Detail

Amy Ritzenberg Graves ’75

Professor of Physics and Astronomy • Swarthmore College

B.A., Mathematics and Physics, Williams College 1979

Ph.D., Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1984

Making her mark in STEM:

“I am living proof that you don’t have to be a science prodigy, or follow a rigid path through your education, to realize that you love STEM and can be good at it.”
Her path was not apparent during her days in dance club, choir and Chapel Theater at Laurel and her first exposure to physics was as a junior in college.
Current research on “jamming”– a phenomenon in which individual entities (li.e., salt in a salt shaker or cars on a busy road) stop flowing and become rigid at a high enough density
Walter Kemp Professor in Natural Sciences endowed chair at Swarthmore College
Fellow of the American Physical Society
Interest in issues of race and gender in STEM, as women and people of color are still dramatically underrepresented

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