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As a child growing up in Daytona Beach, Florida, in the 1950s — well before manned rockets began lifting off in Cape Canaveral nearby to the south — Bill Oegerle (Physics and Astronomy ’72) looked up at the moons of Jupiter through his little telescope and wondered if there might be a future in stargazing.

Indeed, Oegerle later observed the sky through the 0.76-meter telescope at the Rosemary Hill Observatory as an undergraduate in what was then, the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Florida. After earning his Ph.D. in astrophysics at the University of Massachusetts, he joined Princeton University, where he helped operate the Copernicus space telescope, gathering high-resolution ultraviolet spectra of bright stars. He went on to work at NASA on the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope, and played key roles in the early development of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite and the Roman Space Telescope as director of astrophysics at the Goddard Space Flight Center.

In 2016, he was awarded the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, the highest honor NASA can bestow on a civilian.

He was back on the UF campus for homecoming weekend in October, enjoying the brisk weather and a break from the disheartening cleanup of his Sarasota home, which was flooded by Hurricane Helene. With Oegerle was his wife, Robin Olin Oegerle (Music Education ’73), a member of the UF Foundation National Board.

“I was always interested in astronomy — how the stars and galaxies formed — and I was fascinated by the sheer vastness of the universe,” he said. “As a freshman here at the University of Florida in 1968, I was lucky to be in the honors program where you had the freedom to explore different courses in math and physics. I even took several of the graduate-level astronomy courses.”

The Department of Astronomy wasn’t established as a separate academic unit until 1979, but as expected, there are still strong ties and collaboration between the physics and astronomy departments.

Retirement and reconnection

“My connection to UF reignited after I retired,” Oegerle said. “I knew astronomers here, and I knew of various instruments that they were building. So, I watched the department grow and change, but I had no real professional connection to the University of Florida. Then, after I retired, my wife and I would visit the campus a lot. My wife is active in the School of Music. She has a scholarship program for Gator Band musicians, and every year we enjoy meeting with her scholarship students to talk with them about what they’ve done in the past year and what their plans are for the future. I started to think, why don’t I do something like that for physics and astronomy students?”

Robin, Bill’s wife, has established the Robin Olin Oegerle Education Fund, which supports outreach efforts by the university band program.

“I noticed that there were very few scholarship programs that were specific to physics and astronomy students, so I thought I would create a scholarship that would fund students to carry out their own research projects,” Oegerle said.

“As I moved into leadership positions, I became more interested in professional development of younger scientists.”

The William Oegerle Scholarship in Physics and Astronomy

Now in its second year, the William Oegerle Scholarship in Physics and Astronomy supports undergraduates who show exceptional promise in conducting research in physics, astrophysics, or astronomy. The recipients are mentored on a research project by faculty in physics or astronomy.

The 2024-25 recipients of the William Oegerle Scholarship are Christopher McKinney, who is working with Professor Chris Stanton in the Department of Physics, and Savannah Still, who is working with Professor Anthony Gonzalez in the Department of Astronomy. McKinney’s project is titled “Time resolved carrier dynamics in Ge-based heterostructures grown on GaAs.” Savannah’s project is titled “Searching for Lens Structure with JWST Imaging.”

The 2023-24 recipients were Dana Yaptangco, who worked with Assistant Professor Sarah Ballard in the Department of Astronomy, and Nhat Huy Tran, who worked with Assistant Professor Chunjing Jia in the Department of Physics. Oegerle remarked that he was really impressed with the level of research that these students are doing.

“I spent the first part of my career mostly in doing research. As I moved into leadership positions, I became more interested in professional development of younger scientists,” Oegerle said.

“This scholarship is intended to promote the advancement of students who intend to become professional physicists or astronomers. It’s my way of giving something back to the next generation of scientists,” he said.