Department Overview

As you contemplate which college to attend and major you'd like to pursue please give serious the consideration to majoring in physics, astronomy, and/or engineering at Butler University. Butler University and the Department of Physics and Astronomy can offer you a hands-on individual experience that will serve you well once you leave the university, whether you're preparing for graduate research in physics or astronomy, to be an applied physicist or engineer in industry, a high school physics teacher, a physician, a patent lawyer, or medical physicist. Our students have gone on to graduate study at places such as the University of California, MIT, Stanford, Cal Tech, Cornell, Cambridge University, and Johns Hopkins to name a few.

Here are several reasons to why you should consider studying physics and astronomy at Butler University:

Excellent faculty dedicated to teaching and research
Small class sizes, a 7 to 1 student faculty ratio
Excellent teaching and research facilities. These include:
Laboratory for Laser and Quantum Physics
The Big Dawg supercomputer
Hands-on (paid) research experience in fields including observational astronomy and theoretical astrophysics, engineering, condensed matter, elementary particle and nuclear physics, nanotechnology, computational physics, gravitation and relativity, and geophysics.
Employment opportunities within the department.
100% placement rate for summer research positions and internships.
100% placement rate into graduate school and industry (PDF).
A large on campus robotic (1-meter class) telescope at Holcomb Observatory.
Butler's membership in the Southeastern Association for Research in Astronomy (SARA).
Butler is one of 10 members with observing time on two telescopes. One at Kitt Peak Arizona the other at Cerro Tololo, Chile.

Even though you may want a major in physics and/or astronomy later in life you may choose a different career path than physics, astronomy, or engineering. A liberal arts, science education, and problem solving skills you learn in physics are particularly transferable, to law or medicine or many other directions you might choose.

The deadline for departmental scholarship applications is December 1st. If you have any questions concerning scholarships, financial aid, student employment, or any other questions please email or call us.

Department Head: Dr. Xianming Han