Celebrating Our Faculty: Natalie Holzwarth

Natalie Holzwarth is easy to spot around campus with her big smile and purple-rimmed glasses.

If you still cannot find her, then she is likely either teaching the hardest classes in Physics or working with her top-notch research program that is funded by the National Science Foundation.

Holzwarth has become a familiar face at Wake Forest since she joined our faculty in 1983 as an Assistant Professor of Physics. She is an outstanding professor and an extremely hard worker who still finds time to do a tremendous amount of service for the Physics department and the university as a whole.

Holzwarth discusses Electrodynamics with graduate students before most of us are even starting our second cup of coffee in the morning. Not even a winter storm has been able to slow her down.

“One early morning after a big snow, when campus was closed, my family and I had to come to campus,” said Daniel Kim-Shapiro, Department Chair and Professor of Physics. “I joked to them that the only other person that would be in the Olin Physical Laboratory was Natalie.

“It turned out nobody else was there. However, on our way home a short time later, there was Natalie trudging through the snow to get to work on foot as usual.”