Howard Brody

Howard M. Brody (July 11, 1932 – August 11, 2015) was an American physicist who taught at the University of Pennsylvania from 1959 until 1999. Trained in particle physics, he took up the physics of tennis in the mid-1970s and published about 75 scientific papers and three books on the game. The New York Times described him as "the world's foremost physicist of tennis".

His measurements contradicted beliefs widely held among players, including the assumption that tighter strings produce more powerful shots. He served on technical and sport-science committees of the International Tennis Federation (ITF) and the United States Tennis Association (USTA) and advised several other tennis organizations.

Early life and education Brody was born in Newark, New Jersey, on July 11, 1932, He received a bachelor's degree in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1954 and played four years on its varsity tennis team. At the California Institute of Technology he earned a master's degree in 1956 and a doctorate in 1959, both in physics. For students outside the sciences Brody taught a popular course called World of Physics, built on classroom demonstrations rather than equations. In 1991 he served for part of the season as interim coach of the university's men's tennis team, winning all of its remaining matches.

Tennis research On a Florida vacation in the mid-1970s, Brody noticed one of the oversized rackets that the engineer Howard Head had recently brought to market under the Prince brand, and wondered whether the larger head actually made a racket better. The tennis professionals he asked did not know, so he began measuring rackets himself. Some 75 scientific articles on tennis followed.

Much of his laboratory work concerned the few milliseconds during which the ball and the strings are in contact. On an oversized racket the center of percussion sits closer to the middle of the head, which makes such rackets easier for many players to use.

Brody looked at other sports as well. In a 1986 paper he showed that the center of percussion has no bearing on how well a baseball bat performs, and in 1990 he concluded that the batter's grip does not affect the speed of the ball leaving the bat. The Physics of Baseball website of the Illinois physicist Alan Nathan counts him among the pioneers of that field. Shorter papers took up the hardness of athletic surfaces and the use of radar guns. The ITF named the prize for the best research paper at its Tennis Science and Technology congresses after him, and Francesco Ricci Bitti, its president at the time of Brody's death, credited his research with prompting the federation to consider creating its technical centre in Roehampton. In its obituary, The Economist called him the world authority on the behaviour of racket strings and balls. In memorial tributes published by the Professional Tennis Registry, colleagues remembered him as the leading figure in tennis physics and a rare translator of research into coaching practice.

Personal life Brody was married to Lois Chase from 1954 until her death in 2011. They had three daughters, one of whom, Lisa Brody Foley, died in 1991. He lived in Haverford, Pennsylvania. When asked whether his research had improved his own game, he once joked that he would have been a great player if he had spent as much time on the courts as in the laboratory.

Brody died of complications of Parkinson's disease on August 11, 2015, at Bryn Mawr Hospital in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, at the age of 83.

Selected publications