Richard F. Tinder

Professor Tinder's teaching interests have been highly variable over his tenure at Washington State University (WSU). They have included crystallography, thermodynamics of solids (both equilibrium and irreversible thermodyamics), tensor properties of crystals, advanced dislocation theory, solid state direct energy conversion (mainly solar cell theory, thermoelectric effects, and fuel cells), general materials science, advanced reaction kinetics in solids, electromagnetics, and analog and digital circuit theory. In recent years he has taught logic design at the entry, intermediate and advanced levels and has published a major text in the area. He has conducted research and published in the areas of tensor properties of solids, surface physics, shock dynamics of solids, milli-micro plastic flow in metallic single crystals, high speed asynchronous (clock independent) state machine design, and Boolean algebra (specifically XOR algebra and graphics). Professor Tinder holds a B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. all from the University of California, Berkeley. It was there, as a graduate student, he gave his first graduate seminar on relativistic rocket mechanics and space travel to a variety of students and professors in engineering and the physical sciences. He has since lectured on the subject to a discussion group of professors at WSU. Over the years he has cultivated an increasingly active interest in this area while gathering more information from a variety of sources. It is this information together with his own work that Professor Tinder presents in the contents of this text. He has spent one year as a visiting faculty member at the University of California, Davis, in what was then the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science. Currently, he is Professor Emeritus of the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at WSU where he has been a major contributor to the Computer Engineering program there over a period of two decades.