Carlos Handy

Carlos Rafael Handy (born 18 October 1950) is a Cuban-American physicist. He is a professor of physics at Texas Southern University, where he helped establish the university's physics program and served as its first chair. He also co-founded the Center for Theoretical Studies of Physical Systems at Clark Atlanta University. While at Clark Atlanta, he developed the Eigenvalue Method (EMM) technique.

Early life and family Carlos Handy's paternal grandfather, W.C. Handy, known as the "Father of the Blues" Carlos Handy was born in Havana, Cuba, on 18 October 1950. His mother was Afro-Cuban and his father was African American. His mother, Leonor Maria Cartaya was born in 1916 in Matanzas, Cuba. She received a doctorate in education and worked as a teacher. In 1947, she moved to Washington, D.C., in the United States. Handy's father, William Christopher Handy, Jr., was born in 1904 in Clarksdale, Mississippi. His father, and Carlos Handy's paternal grandfather, was W.C. Handy, widely recognized as the "Father of the Blues." He also has a twin sister. Handy's parents met in New York City and married in the 1940s.

Education Handy was raised between in New York City and Cuba, and attended schools in Cuba for the first eight years of his life. He went on to attend Columbia University beginning in 1968, and graduated with a bachelor's in physics and a minor in mathematics in 1972. Handy completed his doctoral education at Columbia University, and earned a master's degree in physics in 1975, and a PhD degree in theoretical physics in 1978. His doctoral thesis at Columbia was titled "The Diagrammatics of gauge transformations for general gauage theories." While at Columbia, he also worked at IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center, collaborating with Martin Gutzwiller, and was also one of the first recipients of the Bell Labs Cooperative Research Fellowship in 1972. He also studied with A. Mueller and John Klauder.

He has served in various professional societies and leadership positions, including on the Committee on Minorities of the American Physical Society and the National Society of Black Physicists. He has also held visiting appointments at CEA Paris-Saclay, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the University of Waterloo.

Personal life Handy met his wife in New Mexico while working at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and they married in 1981.