1935 - 1997

Carl L. Foiles, Professor of Physics at Michigan State University, died on Friday, February 21, 1997 in Lansing. He was born in Hardin, IL, on October 1, 1935. He is survived by his wife Ruth Ann of Lansing; his son, Allen and his wife, Dawn of Cincinnati, OH; daughter Andrea and her husband, Edward Tank of Grand Rapids; brother, Floyd and his wife, Linda Foiles of Culpepper, VA.

He received a Rockerfeller Brothers Fellowship and attended Yale Divinity School. He has been an active Presbyterian all his life and is a member of Westminster Presbyterian Church where he served as a ruling elder, and a member of the Commission on Ministry for the Presbytery of Lake Michigan.

Carl received his bachelors and masters degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Arizona and a Ph.D. in experimental physics, also from the University of Arizona, in 1964. As a student he was elected to Tau Beta Pi, Phi Kappa Phi, and Phi Beta Kappa academic honorary societies.

He held postdoctoral fellowships at Michigan State University (1964 - 1966) and at Imperial College in London (1966 - 1967) before returning to assume a permanent position at Michigan State. He was a visiting scientist at McGill University (Montreal) and at the University of Leiden (Netherlands) in 1981 and 1982.

Professor Foiles joined the faculty of the Department of Physics and Astronomy in 1966 where, for more than 30 years, he studied the physical properties of materials. In his own laboratory at Michigan State, and at Argonne and Brookhaven national laboratories, he probed the structures and interactions in magnetic materials having complicated structures. He was the author of more than 60 scientific publications and wrote the section on thermoelectricity for the prestigious Encyclopedia of Physics.

Eleven students at Michigan State received doctorates or masters degrees under his direction. As a teacher, Professor Foiles introduced innovative modern techniques into undergraduate laboratories, especially in the experimental study of optics. In 1996, his work was recognized by the National Science Foundation with the award of major funding for an enhanced optical laboratory at MSU.

With his passing, the University and scientific community have lost a valued colleague and friend. At the time of his death, Professor Foiles was directing research in magnetic multilayers. These are materials in which magnetic atoms and non-magnetic atoms are arranged in ways that lead to novel behaviors with potential industrial applications. His strength as a scientist was in the application of a wide variety of different experimental techniques to determine the structure and study the electronic interactions in these materials.