Jack Hehn Honored with Worth Seagondollar Award

Over a six-decade career serving the physical science community, Jack Hehn has remained deeply engaged with students and faculty as both an educator and an association leader. It’s a career that’s been built, he says, on collaboration, service, and enduring professional relationships.

“The most important factor in my career, almost without a doubt, has been the outstanding people I’ve had the privilege to work with,” he says. As a young student in Texas, Hehn had an interest in biology and planned to become an oceanographer. But influential teachers and mentors offered encouragement in physics, as well as experiences with early computing that deepened his passion for the field.

At the University of Texas in the 1970s, Hehn met physics professor Robert Beck Clark, who introduced Hehn to the American Association of Physics Teachers and became the most significant mentor of his career.

After finishing his bachelor’s degree, Hehn taught physics, math, engineering, and one of the first computer science courses in the state. Meanwhile, Clark had established a master’s program for physics teachers at Texas A&M University, and Hehn spent summers working toward his degree. He then went on to complete his PhD at the University of North Texas, where he helped to build an innovative physics instructional center.

Later, he transitioned into association leadership, serving at AAPT, the National Science Foundation, and as director of Education at the American Institute of Physics, where he helped launch or grow several major initiatives: the digital library ComPADRE, the Physics and Astronomy Faculty Teaching Institute, the PhysTEC program to strengthen physics teacher preparation, the revitalized SPS Congress, and the SPS intern and reporter programs.

For these and other achievements, Hehn was named the recipient of the Worth Seagondollar Service Award, given in recognition of an exemplary level of commitment and service to the Society of Physics Students and Sigma Pi Sigma. His award citation reads, in part,

His impact on this organization is measured by the number of students who continued on in physics and astronomy and the vibrancy of the countless student club events that occurred during his tenure. ...Jack Hehn continues to serve the physics and astronomy societies with distinction and a never ending passion. Jack is among the best of us and the best of this society.

Hehn also became an honorary Sigma Pi Sigma member, the society’s highest class of membership. Both honors were announced at the 2025 SPS Congress in Denver, Colorado.

“I was overwhelmed,” Hehn says. He recalls being acquainted with Seagondollar, a Manhattan Project physicist and former president of Sigma Pi Sigma, and once hearing him speak to a rapt audience of 700. “To have known him and to receive the award—it’s a big emotional difference and a real pleasure.”

When considering what advice he might pass along to students, Hehn speaks again of relationships. “I’ve been really, really lucky because of the people that I’ve worked with,” he says.

For students, he stresses the importance of perseverance, collaboration, department leadership roles, internships, and society membership. Overall, he says, students should immerse themselves in the world of physics and astronomy.

“It’s a remarkably small community, and you will see people that you meet over and over again for many years,” he says. “The friends you make and work with really inflect your career for the rest of your life. And that’s the real reward.”

About Worth Seagondollar

After working as a graduate student at Los Alamos on the Manhattan Project, nuclear physicist L. Worth Seagondollar was a professor for more than 40 years. He served as president of Sigma Pi Sigma from 1962 to 1967, overseeing the merger between the honor society and the American Institute of Physics that created SPS.