Prize-winning teacher earned nickname of ‘Mother Physics’
AJC REMEMBERS RUTH SANDERS
Ruth Sanders died from COVID-19 just short of her 90th birthday.
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Some of her high school students called her “Mother Physics,” an affectionate nickname handed down from class to class.
Ruth Sanders, a demanding, creative teacher, left her imprint on decades of science students at Grady and Lakeside high schools.
“She was a mother to everyone, which was interesting, because she had no children. She lived for those students,” her niece, Elizabeth Bennett, said.
“She was really a character, a brilliant teacher, and very creative in how she taught,” said former student Jennifer Bullard Madsen. Sanders had students do experiments such as allowing a shower head enough water pressure to drip one drop just as the preceding one hit the floor. “She used that to help us figure out how to calculate the constant for Newton’s law of gravity.”
In a 2007 retrospective, Sanders told the Grady High School newspaper she was not a popular teacher, but many students told her they were glad she held them to a tough standard.
Ruth Virginia Kirby Sanders died from COVID-19 on Jan. 30, two weeks shy of her 90th birthday.
She was born Feb. 13, 1931, in Woodland, Alabama, the sixth of seven children, the only girl, and almost certainly the only person from her high school class to meet both Albert Einstein and poet Robert Frost.
“She was raised to be very independent,” Bennett said.
“She felt like she was free to become anything she wanted.”
Her family had no money for college, but she got a scholarship to Jacksonville State College, and got off the bus as a freshman wearing a dress made of chicken feed sacks and carrying all her belongings in a brother’s U.S. Army duffel bag. When Frost visited the campus, all of the students had to write poems, and he called her onstage and read hers to the student body.
She earned a Bachelor of Science from Jacksonville State and a Master of Science from the University of Alabama. She taught there before moving to Atlanta to become the first female physics teacher at Grady High School in 1956.
Among her students: Yolanda King, daughter of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta King.
While at Grady, she married another science teacher, Eugene Sanders.
Ruth Sanders helped launch the science curriculum of the Georgia Governor’s Honors Program in the early 1960s, and was selected to serve on the national Physical Science Study Committee, a task force that developed standards for high school physics. That work took her to universities like Princeton and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology during summer vacations.
An encounter in a Princeton lab became one of her oft-told stories.
“She walked into the lab one day and found Einstein looking through the wrong end of the spectrometer,” recalled Bennett. “She said, ‘Professor Einstein, I think you might see better if you looked at it the other way.’”
In 1970, Lakeside High School in DeKalb County recruited her aggressively and she switched, becoming the chair of the science department at Lakeside. She retired in 1992.
In a private Facebook group, former Lakeside students paid tribute to her after her death.
“When I finished my Ph.D., my mom sent Mrs. Sanders a copy of my dissertation,” wrote Ralph Whaley. “She called me on the phone, and we had lunch together in the summer of 2001. ... She wanted to know all about my research. She taught me more about hard work and scientific ethics than any college professor.”
“I was thinking of her just yesterday, how she would lock the physics classroom once the bell rang,” wrote Darci Cosgrove. “You couldn’t get in, no matter how long you knocked on the door!”
Sanders was known for helping students excel at highly competitive national science competitions, attend prestigious universities and go on to careers in science.
Sanders told the Grady student newspaper, “I was told I sent more students to MIT and Georgia Tech than anyone.”
She received two Presidential Awards for Excellence in Science Teaching.
Sanders is survived by many nieces, nephews and cousins. A virtual memorial service will be hosted by Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church via Zoom and on the church’s Facebook Live page at 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb.
21. Family and friends are asked to contact the church for reservations. Sanders requested that memorial contributions be made to the public school of the donor’s choice.
Ruth Sanders, a demanding, creative teacher, left her imprint on decades of science students at Grady and Lakeside high schools.
“She was a mother to everyone, which was interesting, because she had no children. She lived for those students,” her niece, Elizabeth Bennett, said.
“She was really a character, a brilliant teacher, and very creative in how she taught,” said former student Jennifer Bullard Madsen. Sanders had students do experiments such as allowing a shower head enough water pressure to drip one drop just as the preceding one hit the floor. “She used that to help us figure out how to calculate the constant for Newton’s law of gravity.”
In a 2007 retrospective, Sanders told the Grady High School newspaper she was not a popular teacher, but many students told her they were glad she held them to a tough standard.
Ruth Virginia Kirby Sanders died from COVID-19 on Jan. 30, two weeks shy of her 90th birthday.
She was born Feb. 13, 1931, in Woodland, Alabama, the sixth of seven children, the only girl, and almost certainly the only person from her high school class to meet both Albert Einstein and poet Robert Frost.
“She was raised to be very independent,” Bennett said.
“She felt like she was free to become anything she wanted.”
Her family had no money for college, but she got a scholarship to Jacksonville State College, and got off the bus as a freshman wearing a dress made of chicken feed sacks and carrying all her belongings in a brother’s U.S. Army duffel bag. When Frost visited the campus, all of the students had to write poems, and he called her onstage and read hers to the student body.
She earned a Bachelor of Science from Jacksonville State and a Master of Science from the University of Alabama. She taught there before moving to Atlanta to become the first female physics teacher at Grady High School in 1956.
Among her students: Yolanda King, daughter of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta King.
While at Grady, she married another science teacher, Eugene Sanders.
Ruth Sanders helped launch the science curriculum of the Georgia Governor’s Honors Program in the early 1960s, and was selected to serve on the national Physical Science Study Committee, a task force that developed standards for high school physics. That work took her to universities like Princeton and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology during summer vacations.
An encounter in a Princeton lab became one of her oft-told stories.
“She walked into the lab one day and found Einstein looking through the wrong end of the spectrometer,” recalled Bennett. “She said, ‘Professor Einstein, I think you might see better if you looked at it the other way.’”
In 1970, Lakeside High School in DeKalb County recruited her aggressively and she switched, becoming the chair of the science department at Lakeside. She retired in 1992.
In a private Facebook group, former Lakeside students paid tribute to her after her death.
“When I finished my Ph.D., my mom sent Mrs. Sanders a copy of my dissertation,” wrote Ralph Whaley. “She called me on the phone, and we had lunch together in the summer of 2001. ... She wanted to know all about my research. She taught me more about hard work and scientific ethics than any college professor.”
“I was thinking of her just yesterday, how she would lock the physics classroom once the bell rang,” wrote Darci Cosgrove. “You couldn’t get in, no matter how long you knocked on the door!”
Sanders was known for helping students excel at highly competitive national science competitions, attend prestigious universities and go on to careers in science.
Sanders told the Grady student newspaper, “I was told I sent more students to MIT and Georgia Tech than anyone.”
She received two Presidential Awards for Excellence in Science Teaching.
Sanders is survived by many nieces, nephews and cousins. A virtual memorial service will be hosted by Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church via Zoom and on the church’s Facebook Live page at 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb.
21. Family and friends are asked to contact the church for reservations. Sanders requested that memorial contributions be made to the public school of the donor’s choice.