Axford Tribute: "Mighty Fine"

In a touching tribute, students, alumni, and colleagues feted Prof. Roy A. Axford on his accomplishment of 50 years of teaching at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

“Mighty fine,” was Axford’s “old Texan” thank you for the outpouring of affection during the Honors Banquet of the Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering Department and the American Nuclear Society student chapter. Several former students expressed their gratitude for Axford while celebrating student, faculty and alumni excellence at the April 21 occasion.

Among the many highlights in the Axford celebration was the ceremonial presentation of a $42,000 check from Exelon Corporation and many of its employees to support the Axford Fellowship Fund. The amount represented gifts from the company as well as donations to match gifts from Exelon employees.

Exelon representatives Ed McVey and Bruce Rash made the presentation. Said McVey, “The check represents more than just the $42,000 that’s there. It represents the money, the thoughts and admiration and respect that your students that are working at Exelon right now have for you. You showed us what it means to be devoted to a profession and to the people that you work with.”

Shy just $10,000 of the endowed fellowship status, the Fund achieved the full $150,000 needed after a matching challenge announced during the banquet propelled many offers of support. The Fund had more than quadrupled since campaigning began for the fellowship three years ago. The quick response reflected the high regard many have for Prof. Axford, and the sentiment was expressed thoroughly at the banquet.

“I want to thank Dr. Axford for the complex stuff that he taught me, and letting me make my own mistakes,” said 2016 NPRE Distinguished Alumni Award winner Steve Coggeshall, Chief Analytics and Science Officer at ID Analytics. Having presented a special seminar, “So You Want to be a Data Scientist,” to a packed university audience earlier in the day, Coggeshall credited his understanding of Lie group techniques to Axford’s instruction. Also appreciated was the professor’s encouragement as Coggeshall pursued a music degree at the same time he earned his NPRE PhD.

Both Coggeshall and Bill Myers, NPRE 2016 Advocate Award winner, brought along slides of equations Axford taught them. “I still go back to all these notes from all those classes from time to time,” said Myers, Deputy Group Leader for the Advanced Nuclear Technology Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory. “Just this week I was using some of these same equations you see on this sheet to put together a talk.”

Alumnus Scott Ramsey, who earned his PhD in 2009, told about the reason he had for pursuing graduate school at the same university where he earned his bachelor’s degree. “I knew that I wanted to work for the best, and that’s Roy Axford,” Ramsey said.

As a researcher at Los Alamos, Ramsey spoke of the national lab’s “Axford Mafia,” a group of several former Axford students who have made substantial contributions to nuclear science over the years. In introducing a video in which several of them offered thanks for Axford’s influence, Ramsey said, “Above all else we have this reputation for penetrating insight and an unflinching fearlessness with regards to technical rigor. These are qualities that we inherited from Professor Axford.”

Also offering congratulations were alumni Mindy Bogart and Dr. William Croisant, and Axford’s colleagues, NPRE Emeritus Profs. Barclay Jones and George Miley.

Axford concluded the celebration with a few words of his own. Thanking Anne Axford, his wife of 62 years, and his NPRE colleagues, the professor said. “A long journey can’t be made without the help and support of a lot of people.”

As the first person to have earned a doctoral degree in nuclear engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1958), Axford taught at both Texas A&M University and Northwestern University before coming to the University of Illinois in 1966.

Axford was instrumental in developing NPRE’s curriculum, and served many years as a consultant to Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Recognized with every departmental-level, college-level, and campus-level award for his teaching acumen, Axford gained another honor when the ANS student chapter presented him, along with NPRE Prof. Rizwan Uddin, with the 2016 Teacher of the Year Award.

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