Mark, in his natural habitat.
I met Mark Wise in 2022, during my freshman year at Caltech. My first-year SURF mentor connected us because of my interests in theoretical particle physics, and his work at the time was directly aligned with our project.
From the beginning, he was incredibly easy to speak with. He welcomed all my naïve questions, recommended readings, and even offered to supervise a reading course — before I even dared to ask. Although he was not officially my SURF mentor, he might as well have been, given the time he devoted to reviewing the theoretical sections of my reports.
By my sophomore year, I had of course heard all about his QFT class from my physics friends. I came to audit several lectures for the content, but left with a lot more: a childlike enthusiasm for physics; many, many coin tosses; wise jokes in my notebook’s margins; and, of course, free singing performances. At the end of lengthier derivations, say, deriving the Faddeev-Popov ghost term, he would put down his chalk, turn slowly from the blackboard, reveal a big smirk, and crescendo into his signature phrase: “It’s the Thrill of Victory!” Occasionally, he would even break into the song to trick his students into thinking the painful derivation was done to keep everyone’s attention, and then comfort us with another motto: “Don’t worry, be happy.”
The following year, I took QFT officially and had the pleasure of being entertained all over again. I was pleased to discover that he had not retired from singing and had, moreover, begun experimenting with the visual arts, most notably by drawing large-eared smiley faces for dummy variables. Needless to say, I also saw how much he cared about his students and how much effort he put into teaching.
A Ph 205 Canvas announcement from Mark lamenting the poor judgment of People’s editorial board.
A magazine cover from a parallel, better universe. (Credit: Toby J. Saunders-A’Court)
A later Canvas announcement explaining Mark’s recent act of heroism.
He routinely prepared his lectures from 10:00 to 10:30 each morning, and would always send post-lecture Canvas announcements correcting or clarifying concepts from class. Occasionally, these announcements addressed less conventional matters: one informed us that Downs-Lauritsen had been attacked by a mob of angry zombies (to this day, I know not what had occurred), and another declared that he had written to People magazine requesting selection for “Sexiest Man Alive” on these impeccable grounds: “How can the sexiest human not know quantum mechanics, let alone relativistic quantum field theory, which is an even sexier topic?” This argument, the class conceded, was difficult to refute.
Mark (fifth from left) leads the annual Baskin-Robbins Ph 205 trip at the end of the 2024-2025 academic year.
But the jokes always came with serious teaching. Whenever he had to miss a lecture, he always made sure to rearrange his schedule to teach us during lunch on Friday, bringing in food from Mendocino Farms or somewhere else from Lake, so that we should be deprived of neither lunch nor fun physics. Of course, we were also always grateful for the occasions on which he invited us to Baskin-Robbins for ice cream at the end of a term, my favorite part being his stories about “Caltech and physics back in the days,” as well as Mark’s sharing of his simple pleasures in life, such as Pasadena’s timeless purple flowers and the sandwich man at Browne.
I also always enjoyed the way Mark Wise would tease his colleagues on the fourth floor, while also making clear how highly he regarded them. This contributed to making the theory department feel much more familial. On one occasion, I remember we were told Clifford Cheung had unexpectedly visited his office around 10:00 a.m. on a Wednesday with some exciting new results, thereby consuming the time he ordinarily reserved for reviewing his QFT lecture notes.
When we entered the classroom later that morning, we found “Blame Cliff!!!” written across the board, so that should the lecture go awry, the culprit had already been identified.
What I appreciated most, however, was how consistently kind Mark Wise was as a person. From when I met him as a freshman until my senior year, he was never quite absent. Whenever we happened to cross paths around campus, he would stop to speak with me. He would invite me into his office and ask what I was working on or reading about, how things were going more generally, or share crazy stories from his time as a graduate student.
When asked questions he couldn’t do justice to, he introduced me to great people whom he thought could, who then helped shape my own research direction. It is safe to say that he contributed greatly to my intellectual and personal growth during my four years at Caltech. I am very grateful for all of our conversations, his generosity, his humor, and his support. He will be greatly missed.
All images provided by Ania Freymond.