"Call me Kirby." That's how Florida State's new vice president for research greeted staffers in his get-acquainted meeting with them in May.

"K-Squared," as he's often called by his physics colleagues, comes to the vice presidency as a trusted and highly respected researcher, teacher and administrator. A nuclear physicist by training, since 1997 Kemper has served as chairman of a department he joined in 1968, only three months after receiving a Ph.D. at Indiana University.

Last year, Kemper, 62, won the ultimate accolade of his fellow academics at Florida State, being named a Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor. In nominating him for the honor, Nobel laureate Robert Schrieffer, chief scientist of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, described Kemper as "a highly distinguished nuclear physicist with an outstanding worldwide reputation" with more than 200 refereed publications to his credit.

Kemper also is cited for his devotion to undergraduate teaching and graduate training (he directed the physics department's graduate education program for six years in the 1980s) and an "infectious enthusiasm" that has won him praise from three generations of students. In 1983, he co-founded a summer science and math camp for high school seniors, and has served as a lecturer in the highly popular program every year since.

-taken from Research in Review Magazine, Summer 2003

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