Dr. Hobson Wildenthal

President ad interim, 2015 – 2016

Dr. Hobson Wildenthal graduated with a bachelor's degree in English and Mathematics from Sul Ross State College in 1958, where his father, Bryan Wildenthal, was president from 1952 to 1965. After earning a PhD in physics in 1964 from the University of Kansas, he held appointments at Rice University, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Texas A&M University and, for 13 years, Michigan State University. He devoted most of the 20 years of his pre-administrative academic career to experimental and theoretical studies of the structure of atomic nuclei, and to teaching large classes of beginning undergraduate physics students. His research is detailed in more than 200 journals and conference proceedings.

He was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1973, and has held visiting appointments at Brookhaven and Los Alamos national laboratories, at the University of Munich, at the Max Planck Institute fur Kernphysik in Heidelberg, at the Gesellschaft fur Schwerionenforschung in Darmstadt, at the University of Paris (Orsay), at the Universities of Oxford and Manchester, and at the University of Sao Paulo. He has been awarded both a Senior U.S. Fellowship from Germany's Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and a Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Wildenthal moved into administrative roles first as Department Head of Physics and Atmospheric Science at Drexel University and then as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of New Mexico. He came to UT Dallas in 1992 as Vice President for Academic Affairs. He was named Provost in 1994 and Executive Vice President in 1999. On May 6, 2015, UT System Chancellor William McRaven appointed Wildenthal ad interim president of the University. Wildenthal's appointment became effective July 1, 2015.