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2026 Richtmyer Memorial Lecture Award to be Presented to Rhett Allain

Rhett Allain to Receive 2026 Richtmyer Memorial Lecture Award

Rhett Allain

The American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) announced today that Rhett Allain has been selected to receive the 2026 Richtmyer Memorial Lecture Award. Allain currently serves as Associate Professor of Physics, Department of Chemistry and Physics, Southeastern Louisiana University, Hammond, LA. The award will be presented at a Ceremonial Session of the AAPT 2026 Winter Meeting.

Dr. Allain is recognized “For his exceptional ability to communicate physics to broad and diverse audiences, his innovative use of books, digital media, and public platforms to inspire curiosity about how the world works, and his sustained commitment to mentoring teachers and students while advancing excellence in teaching and scholarship.”

Allain joined AAPT in 1997 and has served locally in the Louisiana Section and nationally as a Section Representative, Membership & Benefits Committee member. and on the Annual Meetings Planning Subcommittee.

Allain has a popular blog at WIRED.com that focuses on explaining physics concepts to the general public. For more complicated topics with more detail, he also posts regularly on Medium.com. Supplementing his blogs, he creates short form science videos on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.

He conveys his passion for physics with his quest to show that science is all around us in the real world and not just in textbooks. Allain also loves to incorporate numerical calculations in introductory physics calculations. His running joke is that he often takes things apart to figure out how they work but he can’t always put them back together.

Allain cares about communicating physics to the public and he is preparing the next generation of teachers in his classroom to communicate physics to the current generation of students and the public. At Southeastern Louisiana University he teaches a wide array of physics courses for undergraduates-all year round, including a a general education physics course, some of his students go into elementary or middle school teaching. In this class Allain emphasizes the nature of science: that science is about building models and it is not necessarily about finding the truth that never changes. We build better models to explain the physical world.

The author of four books, Allain communicates physics ideas to the public and to physics students and teachers. He continues to emphasize the idea of model building in science and uses python and video analysis to visualize and model the physical world. He is passionate about introducing some form of computation into his classes. He believes that computation can fit in our courses, sometimes, all that is needed for our students is to write pseudocode. Other times, minimally working programs serve our students well, and sometimes students can write code from scratch. The Dot-physics YouTube channel has a lot of computational examples for students and teachers.

He serves as a mentor to a large number of teachers across the United States. Allain has been involved with the Faculty Learning Community (FOLC) for Next Generation Physics for Everyday Thinking (Next Gen PET) since 2017. Faculty in this community meet every two weeks during the school year to talk about their experiences teaching physics to General Education (Gen Ed) and Education major students.

When you ask Allain why he blogs right now, he says he does it for himself! That is surprising but that is the reason why his stuff appeals to a wide audience-he does this work because he enjoys it and loves science. His journey into blogging started off as an exercise intended to show his students what kinds of projects he would want them to work on, and it has ended up being something he does for love.

About the Award

The Richtmyer Memorial Lecture Award is given in memory of Floyd K. Richtmyer, distinguished physicist, teacher, and administrator. Professor Richtmyer was one of the founders of AAPT and served as its president. As a teacher, author, research worker, and dean, he was the guide for many young physicists who became leaders of American science and has had a wide influence on the development of physics in the United States. The award has been given since 1941 to a person who has made outstanding contributions to physics and effectively communicated those contributions to physics educators.

About AAPT

The American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) is the premier international organization for physics educators, physicists, and industrial scientists—with members worldwide. Dedicated to enhancing the understanding and appreciation of physics through teaching, AAPT provides awards, publications, and programs that encourage practical application of physics principles, support continuing professional development, and reward excellence in physics education. AAPT was founded in 1930 and is headquartered in the American Center for Physics in College Park, Maryland.