Charles Elwood Mendenhall

Charles Elwood Mendenhall (August 1, 1872 – August 18, 1935) was an American physicist and professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Early life Charles Elwood Mendenhall was born on August 1, 1872, in Columbus, Ohio. He was the son of Susan Allen (née Marple) and Thomas Corwin Mendenhall. At the age of six to nine, he lived in Japan while his father taught at the University of Tokyo. Under Rowland, he worked with Charles Greeley Abbot, head of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, and fellow student Frederick A. Saunders, a fellow PhD candidate, on a black-body radiation problem for his thesis.

Later career He became the department chair at the University of Wisconsin in 1926. He remained professor until his death in 1935.

He was the vice president of The Optical Society in 1921 and the president of the American Physical Society from 1923 to 1925.

He played the violin and was active in musical circles for much of his life. In 1935, he was appointed fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the American Philosophical Society. The Charles Elwood Mendenhall Fellowship is an award given to graduate students working in experimental physics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.