First-Hand:Disability Story of Harold M. Frost, III, A Mathematical Physicist

Harold M. Frost, III, Ph.D., P.O. Box 162, Sheffield, Vermont, 05866 USA.

Life Senior Member of IEEE

July 25, 2018

Scope

This 15-page account is the story of a 76-year-old survivor of mental illness, and of associated discrimination in the STEM workplace on disability, age and religious grounds who let go of wrongs suffered as a morally conscientious scientist and finally simply moved on to do new but now unpaid pro bono physics research and in other ways reached out to help others. It is presented from a professional, vocational and even analytic perspective in the three periods I, II, and III of the STEM career of Dr. Frost as defined in Appendix 1.

Period I involves his post-Ph.D. work history prior to acquiring in the late 1989-early 1990 timeframe a major mental disability at work in Los Alamos, N.M., with Period II covering onset of that disability and treatment for it (in three episodes). In Period II as a recovery strategy , he took a five-year sabbatical to write poetry and paint in oils and acrylics, starting in New Mexico and continuing on in Vermont. While this artistic activity is not described here, it is included in an interview article done on Dr. Frost in the July 2007 issue of the North Star Monthly, as mentioned subsequently in this write-up (with URL given for downloading the full text). That issue came out about four months after a very successful retrospective solo art show at Catamount Arts in St. Johnsbury, Vt. of Dr. Frost’s art work, the corpus of which was inspired by religious and spiritual themes of personal identity, themes intensified by personal suffering and cropping up unexpectedly in his post-disability-onset career as a scientist, as detailed subsequently in this write-up.

Period III details a long post-recovery process of transformative growth taking place in Vermont in his new professional identity as a mathematical physicist. However, he added to that research effort an online advocacy campaign for employers and other STEM leaders to put in place infrastructure for greater diversity and inclusion of mentally disabled STEM workers, students and members of the workforce, educational institutions, and professional non-profit organizations in a bid to help them, too, by providing resource materials for possible development of teaching guidelines on the History of Disabled Physicists that might be drawn up eventually by historians.

In keeping, with the no-fault/no-blame slant chosen for fleshing out this story, names of some persons in Dr. Frost’s story are withheld when deemed appropriate. His story starts with an acknowledgement of the negative impact of his mental disability on his publications output.

Observation of Gap in Publications Record

A gap of 1997-2004 exists in Dr. Frost’s scientific publications and presentations record represented in a 20-p.list also available electronically on request (as well as a CV) . His last peer-reviewed research journal paper was published in 1994 in which he was a co-author (second author). The last peer-reviewed research journal paper for which Dr. Frost himself took the lead for writing was published in 1988. (In 1988, he was using physician-prescribed medications to manage a condition of depression while still working full-time at LANL.) There was no research activity in this seven-year period, though in 1998-1999 he did do on-the-job training as a nuclear-waste technologist in a temporary at-will staff member position at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in north central New Mexico.

Etiology of Gap from Disability History, Religious Convictions & Conflict of Interest of LANL Manager

This gap in publications output was due in part to acquiring at mid-career a major disability leading to a string of related losses in the workplace including a career-damaging involuntary separation from employment and a subsequent career-distracting struggle for professional and vocational survival. Cognitive impairment of function as a scientist first resulted from acute onset of this major disability in December 1989, with disclosure to LANL line management in early 1990, and its recurrence in 1991 and 1999. Independence as a research scientist was lost in 1990 at age 47 due to (1) a directly related loss of status as PI of his two federally-funded research projects and (2) a massive involuntary layoff in late 1995 at LANL in a management response to a projected FY96 budget deficit. In response to the 1995 layoff, Dr. Frost decided on a strategy of litigation for securing full reinstatement to work as a permanent staff member at LANL. This litigation was first administrative in character, then legal.

After the layoff, Dr. Frost had filed for an internal grievance hearing allowed in accordance with official LANL policies and procedures. This hearing took place at LANL in 1996, with attorneys present for both sides at LANL management insistence. It was conducted before a panel of three of Dr. Frost’s peers who were also staff members at LANL, one chosen by himself, one by LANL, and the third by mutual consent. The proceedings were tape recorded. The panel recommended unanimously that Dr. Frost be reinstated as a permanent staff member at LANL. This recommendation was transmitted to the top level of management at LANL, the Director’s Office, where it was summarily rejected without explanation.

As testimony at this hearing came to show, unbeknownst to himself Dr. Frost had been targeted on grounds other than performance- or mission-related criteria by being placed on a RIF list as a direct result of having stated in early 1995 to his line management a preference to not work on nuclear bomb parts per se. One of those to whom this preference was stated in early 1995 was the leader of his work team at LANL, Nondestructive Testing and Evaluation (NDT&E). Another was the new leader of a recently created group to which this work team and thus Dr. Frost had been transferred.

It took over three years for someone in authority to recognize the true meaning of that stated preference to not work on nuclear bomb parts. Only in late 1998 was this preference recognized to have arisen from Dr. Frost’s religious convictions. Recognition of the true meaning of his statement of work preference, a statement which LANL had agreed through its lead attorney at the internal grievance hearing was not a matter for cause, occurred in dramatic fashion in a federal district court room in Albuquerque, NM during pre-trial settlement hearings in 1998 before a federal judge in a legal case in which LANL was the defendant and Dr. Frost the only plaintiff. The sole goal of Dr. Frost in this federal case was simply reinstatement to employment at LANL as a permanent (technical) staff member.

This judge uncharacteristically asked Dr. Frost point blank rather than his own attorney also present (the usual courtroom protocol) if religion were the reason for his preference and Dr. Frost responded with a “yes.” The judge then immediately exerted strong pressure on attorneys for both plaintiff and defendant to try harder to settle, in part, apparently, because Dr. Frost’s disclosure had freedom of religion protection under the First Amendment rights of the U.S. Constitution.

The settlement included an evident take-it-or-leave-it (second) offer by LANL of a limited-term at-will position as a staff member in an operations-based position involving cleanup of nuclear waste at LANL stored at secure nuclear facilities that were also ‘behind the fence.’ Unwisely, Dr. Frost, who performed best and most comfortably and productively in research-related positions ‘outside the fence,’ accepted this offer which returned him to work full-time at LANL in December 1998, thus allowing him to support his family as well as himself.

He joined a fast-paced team with much LANL, State, and federal regulatory oversight as of the DOE Operations Office in Albuquerque. On this team he devoted most of his time to on-the-job certification training in field-based gamma- ray spectroscopy as a tool for nondestructive assessment (NDA) of radionuclide contents in sealed drums of low-level nuclear waste. Other duties along with management expectation to achieve NDA operator certification, plus a difficult office environment and frequent staff meetings involving unpredictable operational assignments, turned this position into a high-stress job.

Near the end of his training period in mid 1999, the work stress became so high that he sought assistance from the LANL employee assistance program (EAP) to mitigate it. This approach had worked for him in 1990-1992 during his first two episodes of major depression onset at LANL. However, this time it backfired, due in large measure to a conflict of interest of the manager in charge of the field office he visited, as this manager was also responsible for fitness-for-duty evaluations. (This manager was a Ph.D. clinical psychologist.)

With Dr. Frost’s consent but without any knowledge of who at LANL had authorized it in accord with LANL’s policies and procedures manual, the assessment was duly administered by this EAP manager while Dr. Frost was on paid administrative leave. Instead of being returned to work, however, after several months of testing, then waiting, Dr. Frost was declared not fit for duty by a deputy group leader of occupational health at LANL (under whom the EAP manager worked), in a memo dated later in 1999, with a copy handed over to him without comment in a meeting at LANL shortly thereafter. His worst fears had been realized, separation from work, concerns which he had even confided to that EAP manager while the latter administered the battery of psychological tests. The notification event precipitated another acute onset of his major disability (depression) but now exacerbated by a concomitant condition (anxiety) and a prior painful physical injury acquired on LANL property during a break from work.

After transitioning into a third leave of absence on long-term disability income and then moving back to Vermont with his wife, Dr. Frost was informed by USPS mail in January 2001 that his official date of separation from LANL had been December 29, 2000, essentially, then, at the end of his limited term of employment of two years. Accordingly, Dr. Frost’s last day in the LANL workplace as a salaried employee – or with any employer, for that matter – had been back in June 1999 when he had naively reached out in a trusting manner for help to the EAP.

Besides further loss of cognitive ability and being forced now on an emergency basis to seek private medical intervention outside LANL to treat his once again acute but now exacerbated mental condition (along with a worsening physical injury of a frozen shoulder acquired while on break near the work site), Dr. Frost had by now completely lost all his former boldness and confidence as a creative and imaginative scientific researcher able to come up with good, even original, ideas and then defend and test them, usually with positive results useful to his employer and research project sponsors.

Personal and Professional Growth After Losses

Nonetheless, after the disastrous experience at LANL and then a five-year sabbatical interval mostly in Vermont that led to a restoration of some cognitive function, there began in 2005 a transformative technical and social growth period returning Dr. Frost to work as an independent scientist able to interact productively with other scientists. This was Period III (2005-2018).

A sub-section infra of this write-up evidences the technical part of this growth through description of Dr. Frost’s restored R&D work output over this period. However, there is another important data point supporting the conclusion that Dr. Frost in this period was once again able to solve problems but now even in a social context by coming up with a plan to cope with an emergency threatening to completely disrupt the financial base for supporting himself and his wife. That is, while he no longer had federal agency grants or other support for his research projects, that base still allowed him a measure of intellectual independence in his unpaid work due to receipt of monthly retirement checks from the U.S. Social Security Administration and the University of California Retirement Program (UCRP) for former LANL employees.

However, just before Christmas 2007, Dr. Frost received a USPS form-letter mailing from UC informing him that most of his UCRP retirement annuity was to be taken from him due to a technicality cited in the face of sizeable shortfalls in the annual UC budget. This cut would have removed 40% of the combined income for himself and his wife living with him who was also on retirement income. This notification amounted to an emotional bombshell capable of sparking another recurrence of Dr. Frost’s illness. However, his emotional and cognitive ability to cope with crisis now was much stronger than it had been at the lows of 1990-1999 after the first acute onset of major disability while in the employ of LANL over that period. That is, by late 2007 Dr. Frost had recovered enough emotional strength and ability to think and solve problems, to have the idea to appeal this UC decision, enlist his wife’s help in doing so.

The plan was to write an appeal letter to the lower-level manager responsible for the retirement income reduction decision, but with copies to the President of UC and others with legal interest in the matter. Part of his plan was for her to write half of the copy for this letter and edit in the other half provided by Dr. Frost. She would provide the style and tenor of the full letter, sign it as her own, and post it by the end of December. The rationale of Dr. Frost for doing it this way was that he needed to keep his stress level within manageable bounds by staying out of the loop. So this plan was accepted by her and an appeal letter was duly crafted and sent out to UC by year’s end.

Amazingly, this approach was unexpectedly successful, yielding spectacular results.

That is, on his own initiative the UC President, Robert C. Dynes, transferred review of the case over to his own staff, informing Mrs. Frost by letter of this decision in January 2008. Then, in a March letter signed by him, Pres. Dynes wrote back to her to report the results of the review. He overturned the decision of his lower-level manager by restoring Dr. Frost’s monthly retirement check to “its current level” as well as to offer this statement: “Please accept my apologies for the distress this has caused your family.” President Dynes also decided to include the additional years Dr. Frost had been on disability from LANL as part of his total years of UC service credit. This decision then allowed Dr. Frost later that year to plan and fill out the paperwork for his legally required retirement from UC related to reaching age 65, in which he made his wife a contingent annuitant of the UCRP.

To return to the technical part of Dr. Frost’s transformation as a scientist: By 2010 Dr. Frost was working as a productive mathematical physicist and owner and president of his own consulting business which included pro bono work as a part of the business model, such as issuing without copyright protection technical reports on scientific and educational research results cited in his CV. Also, he was (1) acting as a catalyst to initiate professional partnerships to help bring about innovation in STEM and related strategic human resources (HR) management in the workplace, and (2) urging professional organizations, State and federal governments, and educational institutions to provide young students, as in high school and college, more inclusive opportunities for STEM-related careers.

How this turnaround occurred is part of Dr. Frost’s story of struggle, survival, functional recovery, and return of professional successes, a story spanning the Periods II-III in his research career defined in Appendix 1. To better see that this turnaround in Period III was at the high level of a transformation in Dr. Frost’s situation, the following provides contrasting details from the disability and recovery phase, that is, Period II, not covered in the preceding sub- section. These details provide reasons for Dr. Frost’s declining work productivity at LANL over 1990-1999.

Prior to Period III, Period II covering 1990-2004 featured early stages of functional impairment due to acute disability onset openly disclosed by Dr. Frost to his line management in early 1990, then later stages of treatment and gradual recovery of function. (Over 1999-2004, his program for recovery included the systematic writing and sharing of poetry and abstract oil and acrylic paintings.)

In just the 20th century portion of this period at LANL, his corresponding work performance levels and production rates suffered cumulatively due to:

1. Taking needed medical leaves of absence in 1990 and 1991 from the workplace at LANL as already mentioned, plus a third one in 1999,
2. Receiving a ‘pink slip’ in 1993 from his line manager after having lost his PI status and then any funding from his former DOE-funded projects to cover his own time, thus being forced to work as the ES&H officer for his group, a high- stress administrative position,
3. Experiencing career disruptions due to involuntary separations involving not only the mentioned layoff in late 1995 but also one in late 1996 as a LANL contractor employee despite funding availability, plus the mentioned failing in late 1999 of a fitness for duty evaluation,
4. Experiencing a corresponding lack of success in fully reintegrating back into the workforce when a particular job crisis had been resolved, especially when the groups he accordingly worked in at the time were part of LANL divisions undergoing or were still experiencing operational aftereffects of structural reorganizations mandated by senior management,
5. Becoming increasingly obsolescent in computer-based work & electronic communications tools, due to aforementioned long absences from the workplace,
6. Falling increasingly behind in current technical knowledge needed to stay on top of his areas of scientific expertise such as recent research journal papers published on nuclear radiation effects and damage in materials, and
7. Being progressively isolated from a supportive network of contacts due to: (a) No longer being ‘in circulation,’ (b) key early retirements of other staff members at LANL who had offered him jobs and had been supportive supervisors there (two having hired him), and (c) a culture of exclusion at LANL tending to bar acceptance of or extend help to those employees who had been laid off in previous RIF’s or had litigated against LANL such as suing it in State or federal court, as over employment-related issues.

Nonetheless, over Period III which started in 2005 about six years after his last day in the workplace at LANL as a salaried employee there and which took place mostly in rural Vermont, Dr. Frost gradually and progressively discovered, developed and applied his own best knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) to do exploratory scientific research (ESR) once again in solid state physics, but now with much greater awareness of himself as a mathematical physicist rather than the erstwhile experimentalist, which identity had evolved over time from a seminal, consequential second choice in graduate school to do his 1974 physics dissertation topic on experimental ultrasonics.

This current work as a theorist is much less stressful for him than was the faster-paced and more management intensive projects at LANL and at Penn State (for example) in which he supervised or contributed to R&D tasks and projects requiring staffing, labs and expensive capital equipment, leading many of them as PI. Given the harrowing experience of disability and its impacts on his career as a research physicist as enumerated in the preceding list, it is truly remarkable that Dr. Frost could recover any level of meaningful work activity and productivity, let alone once again do pathbreaking scientific research and even set up his own consultancy as his first independent business venture. It is quite possible that his sabbatical of five years (1999-2004) taken off from scientific interests, to write poetry and paint and show abstract oils and acrylics, constituted a necessary part of the overall reason for this return to productive work once again as a physicist.

Acceptance of his change of physics specialty from experimental solid-state physics to theoretical condensed-matter physics came in part from stumbling upon and developing a new model for learning STEM subject matter and another new model for doing exploratory scientific research, reports on both of which are cited in his CV. Both models fit his forced circumstances of no longer having a salary, nor co-workers ‘down the hallway’ to interact with on a continuing basis, nor any federal agency funding to support his research or professional travel. They also fit his cognitive profile as a researcher who found it very difficult now to learn from textbooks or coursework, who thus had to find alternate ways to learn and do exploratory research in which his idiosyncratic work style in the absence of research project funding or scientific collaborators was no longer a net liability but a net asset.

A lifesaver was his office at home, with a PC and wideband Internet service which gave him access via institutional subscriptions during unpaid faculty appointments over 2005-2011 to full-text downloadable versions of papers published in scientific research journals that Dr. Frost used to do the literature searches required for his research documented in white papers and technical reports. Now from his residence he communicated with current and past colleagues, mostly via e-mail.

In terms of an overall HR framework encompassing greater STEM workforce diversity resulting from inclusion of a broader spectrum of cognitive styles, Dr. Frost saw now that, though he was ‘different’ in his profile of work abilities, heuristics, and practices, he indeed still did fit into the overall schema for the grand enterprise of discovering new knowledge and then using it for the long-range benefit of society.

Increasing this sense of self acceptance and awareness of a right to be included within the community of scholars were two rational notions. One of these was that, if the frequency of a wide range of cognitive styles for learning and solving problems among STEM scientists and engineers within a large population of such workers did obey a normal distribution, Dr. Frost’s style would lay within one of its two- or three-sigma ‘tails’ -- but nonetheless under the same curve sheltering all scientists and engineers. The other was that there thus must be others like him who had found themselves formerly isolated just because they were located on the perimeter of what was commonly accepted as the scientific research establishment, that is, far from the peak, average or norm for this distribution or ‘bell’ curve.

This self-acceptance would later become the root of increasing acceptance of Dr. Frost in the first decades of the 21st century by other scientists, whether researchers or educators, and of his unusual ways of learning, solving formerly intractable problems, and even discovering important new ones whose existence heretofore had eluded the international scientific research community.

Contrasting Baseline of Publications Record in Period Before Acquiring a Major Disability

To provide a comparison basis for evaluating Dr. Frost’s work output in Periods II and III, the earlier Period I (1974- 1989) is chosen as a scientific performance baseline. This period in Dr. Frost’s research career as an experimental solid-state physicist includes that part (1984-1989) of a little over five years as a staff member at LANL before disclosure in early 1990 to line management of his first onset of acute major disability.

But even then within sub-period (1984-1989) of employment at LANL when his annual performance appraisals were dotted with commendations in the vein of ‘far exceeds requirements,’ he been troubled by his relatively low rate of output of published research journal papers. That is, his number of such papers per year amounted to only about 10- 15% of that of the so-called “best and brightest” and most productive workers at LANL who thus were provided the best positions with the most up-to date labs and the greatest degree of intellectual freedom in its basic-research oriented groups, as within its Physics and its Materials Science & Technology Divisions and its Center for Materials Science.

To wit, over 1976-1994 Dr. Frost’s most important publications had an average annual rate of about a single occurrence of either one peer-reviewed research-journal paper per year or one U.S. patent award per year, as opposed to the ten per year that a group leader in Physics Division at the time had told Dr. Frost was the standard he had to meet. His job bids, then, were never competitive enough to land even interviews for most of these desirable staff member positions.

Evidence for Recovery of Technical Performance

Renewed scientific activity by Dr. Frost as written and oral STEM works completed in Periods II – III of his research career, now more as a theoretical as opposed to an experimental physicist, is indicated by corresponding citations over 2005-2012 in several sections of his CV. While over this time no papers were published in any peer-refereed research journal nor were any federal agency grants or contracts awarded to support his research, Dr. Frost’s physics-related technical performance and achievement levels rose in several other respects to pre-1990 levels, and in potential societal importance of his contributions as a mathematical physicist now, even exceed those. His means of disseminating written research results was no longer in the broadcast mode of scientific journal publishing but as directed USPS mailings and e-mail attachments to selected scientists with the expertise to understand his work. Some oral talks were also given, but at a lower rate than in Period I of his scientific research career.

This trend has continued to the present day. In fact, the technical contributions that his firm, Frosty’s Physics, LLC had made over the four years that it was active that Dr. Frost is most proud of are:

1. Developing and disseminating a major new ultrasound bioeffects mechanism, “sold-state mechanical shear strain (SSMSS),” important to the medical community using ultrasound in medicine such as for biomedical imaging, and
2. Proposing via a comprehensive semi-classical physics analysis a major new interaction to include in the theory for NMR for when the test sample is moved uniformly, a new interaction potentially of great importance to the field of MRI as a new 3D image contrast mechanism for internal, endogenous electric fields at nanoscopic to macroscopic size scales in biological tissue and in patients, whether these electric fields are quadrupolar or not.

Concerning (1), Dr. Frost shared this new ultrasound bioeffects model with many scientists who have been interested in or have even taken part in risk-vs.-benefit assessments of the use of ultrasound in medicine, from both the efficacy and the safety perspectives. This notably included Dr. Charles C. Church of Ole Miss, a former consultant to NCRP’s Special Committee 66 chaired by Dr. Frost’s former dissertation advisor, Prof. Wesley L. Nyborg, as well as with Prof. Nyborg himself who died in 2011. Further, Dr. Frost reached out to the Bioeffects Committee of the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine (AIUM), to the Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH; part of the FDA), and scientists in academia who knew about Dr. Frost’s 1974 physics dissertation and related publications.

Concerning (2), several scientists in the U.S. and Europe had agreed to critique the draft of a paper he had written on this new NMR interaction, but they all failed to follow through on their commitments to do so. At this late stage, Dr. Frost has stopped his efforts to connect with the mainstream of NMR researchers due to a complete silence in response to his approaches to them.

Other progress includes the two proposed technical ideas profiled in Appendix 2.

New Identity and New Abilities as a ‘Late Bloomer’ Scientist

Actually, Dr. Frost has rediscovered and recaptured his identity as a theoretical physicist, since quantum field theory (such as that of Physics Nobelist Julian Schwinger) had been his first choice for a research field in which to do a Ph.D. dissertation topic at UVM in 1969. As part of this new-found identity as a scientist, Dr. Frost discovered he has two basic, STEM-related abilities which spring from a personal identity of not really knowing what he is doing intellectually but nonetheless is able to get things done and get them ‘right’ at a high cognitive level. These abilities are:

1. Spotting and reporting flaws in reasoning, such as errors in logic found in published verbal and mathematical arguments, or in his own work, and
2. Generating new syntheses of systems, theories, and people, such as:
   1. inventing novel combinations of test instrumentation and experimental prototype devices for making ground- breaking measurements to test ideas or hypotheses,
   2. formulating new theoretic predictive or descriptive frameworks which introduce overlooked physical interactions of potentially practical significance or societal importance, and
   3. catalyzing new partnerships in which formerly disparate professional groups gradually but progressively come together in coherent ways to cooperate for the common good, recruiting especially those who are able to do something to help those who, for whatever reason such as youth (as in students) or disability (as in retirees or disabled workers), temporarily cannot.

The foregoing reveals an improved quality in Dr. Frost’s scientific work, as, for example, it is linked more cogently and logically now to technical topics of importance to society such as improved medical diagnostic tools such as ultrasonic imaging and MRI. This quality is also enhanced through an ability to learn and contribute better now as an independent analytic mathematical physicist doing theoretical research by pen and paper not requiring support from federal grants and contracts. This research often starts with a simple idea that has either been overlooked by others or may even seem to be too outrageous from a standpoint of sound physics for many physicists to entertain seriously! Three properties of this high level of quality in his theoretical physics research output are creative imagination, sound logic in his reasoning even when it is analogic, and internal consistency of extensive mathematical calculation.

Abilities (1) and (2) preceding, however, underlie not only the quality in Dr. Frost’s current work but also, as seen in hindsight, the quality in his work prior to 1990. That shine of quality compensates for a relatively small number of peer-reviewed journal papers and U.S. patents prior to 1995 and the lack of any such works since then. This realization has helped Dr. Frost to better accept that balance or pivot point between quality and quantity of work that is best or optimal for him as a ‘late bloomer’ in terms of net creative output of greatest potential benefit to a employer or client.

This is true even though his perception of that pivot point in his case had been skewed, such as by his:

1. Aforementioned layoff and disability history, and
2. Unwise acceptance of common but rigid norms for best quantity of output of refereed journal papers, without reference to their degree of quality nor with any fit to the best that he personally can deliver.

The “best” in item (2) preceding that Dr. Frost had delivered to clients or the public domain was to analyze problems found by others to be intractable to solution, or discover important problems that had not yet been formulated. Another property of Dr. Frost’s “best” is what he delivered in his own scientific research when allowed the full intellectual independence and freedom needed. Examples of this are found in Dr. Frost’s CV.

Successful return of Dr. Frost from disability to productive technical work is also anticipated or shown in a broader third-party context by two news articles on him. One is a pre-retirement interview published in the year of a successful retrospective juried solo exhibition of his abstract oil and acrylic paintings [Terry Hoffer, “Nuclear Physics Can Be a Cold and Unforgiving Career,” The North Star Monthly, July 2007 issue, pp.16-17]. The other article is a shorter, more upbeat summary published three years later, after retirement [“A new lease on life after disability, retirement,” a Share Your Stories feature in New Dimensions, the benefits newsletter for University of California retirees, November 2010 issue, p.6].

Disclosing One’s Disability Status Is a Positive Social Contribution to the STEM Workforce

In addition to those already cited, one reason Dr. Frost is willing to disclose his disability is to provide a strong rational case to professional societies, disability employment policy analysts, legislators, employers, colleagues, and the like for greater inclusion of under-represented, under-valued, and under-utilized disabled workers, especially mentally disabled scientists and like STEM workers in the national economy, whether still employed but now marginalized within it or even separated from it.

This includes new paradigms with more effective business practices designed to enhance STEM innovation as a critical driver for achieving the very goals of economic growth and national well-being shared by most of its citizens, as based on greater awareness among employers that those with disabilities – including and perhaps especially mental or cognitive disabilities – have the very skills of problem solving, ability to think, fresh perspectives and heuristics, imagination, creativity, innovation, self-motivation, loyalty, and long-term persistence that they value in their top employees.

Thus, employer hiring, retraining, and retaining of such disabled workers is a long-range win-win situation for all concerned, whether for entry-level or mid-career positions for STEM workers with disabilities acquired before or after hiring, respectively. This includes the extra expense, work and time required by an employer for an older worker to re- integrate back into the workforce being re-hired after a layoff and thus a protracted period of unemployment and consequent outdating of knowledge and computer-based and other toolkits before being offered and accepting his or her new position. Also, one who had been away from the workplace while on authorized long-term leave of absence to deal with and recover from a major illness or disability thus has to ‘catch up’ to fit once again into the workforce upon returning after receiving a medical clearance that is accepted by management.

Scenario thinking for STEM workers at a national laboratory indicates that doing this may better ensure that the late bloomers in the workforce, most of whom perhaps are ‘sleepers’ not recognized by management as such, will be around when a ‘showstopper’ problem for some important project or program arises that only one of these can solve, or when some national emergency arises and a new technology has to be developed quickly to counter an imminent or present military or terrorist threat to the Nation – and the younger scientists having been entrusted with anticipating such a development had failed to come up with the technical answers needed for timely countermeasures.

On other grounds, too, such an approach is a ‘win’ for all concerned. That is, a line and HR management culture more age blind in settling on the conditions at which individual scientific and technical creativity peaks and thus just who are the best and brightest scientists and engineers will be much more efficient in capturing and utilizing the ‘late bloomers’ in the professional STEM workforce that are (by hypothesis here) a necessary complement to the outstanding postdoctoral scientists hired for accomplishment of science-based mission by a research institution such as LANL which wishes to develop its best workers. Accordingly, the “late bloomer” hypothesis is introduced subsequently in this write-up.

Social Outreach as a New Dimension of Dr. Frost’s Career as a ‘Late Bloomer’ Educator

A strong sign of growth as a person after a harrowing experience with mental disability exacerbated by a lack of ‘street savvy’ with the political and social realities of his workplace with his former employer in Los Alamos is provided by Dr. Frost’s social outreach efforts to the larger STEM community.

Initially, this included advocating for improved business practices in HR management in university, academic and government settings in the U.S. and Canada – and worldwide -- for better utilizing the valuable but still under-utilized human capital available in the disabled STEM workforce. Later, Dr. Frost found freedom from this focus on disability rights to add another important issue in his social outreach efforts – the role of students becoming the next generation of scientists and engineers to attack the Nation’s and globe’s grand engineering challenges such as the 14 posed and posted by the NAE.

With regard to disability issues per se, constructive letters to the editor were published over 2008-2012 in the Canadian online journal, Journal of Ethics in Mental Health, along with constructive lessons- learned e-mail, for example, to LANS (the past corporate offices of his former employer LANL) and to the Director of the Office of Personnel Management of the U.S. government whose Office of Diversity and Inclusion Director, Veronica E. Villalobos, replied with a USPS letter. Other examples of activity along these lines include:

1. Comments posted online, moderator-approved, and published over 2011-2018 in response to articles in the online versions of STEM magazines such as The Institute of the IEEE and Physics Today of the AIP;
2. Letters to the Editor of The Institute published online on how the disabled are still being ignored in the STEM professions in the U.S. and on the planning that went into the formation of Dr. Frost’s own consulting business and its research accomplishments in its first two years of existence.

Other advocacy for greater inclusion of students in activities of professional societies and in meeting engineering challenges of the 21st century has included a number of moderator-approved comments responding to the Cambridge Journals Blog of Cambridge University Press (blog.journals.cambridge.org), and the NAE web site content involving the 14 Grand Engineering Challenges it has identified including fusion energy.

As opportunities arose, Dr. Frost has even taken part in teaching and other educationally related activities, such as those of a local private high school academy. These have included serving as a senior capstone project presentation evaluator and advising students thinking about STEM careers as in engineering. Further afield, Dr. Frost vetted with Vermont and New Mexico State departments of education a 2008 white paper, on a new STEM learning system or model developed as an adaptive response to his own major disability which had impaired his ability to learn along more traditional lines the advanced physics needed in his research as on theoretical NMR. Objective analysis, as validated by a former board member and educator for the College of Santa Fe in New Mexico, indicates a likelihood that this model is transferrable to high school and college students.

Other examples of social outreach for the benefit of others include philanthropy with gifts typically in the three-figure category, to Dartmouth College (his Dad’s alma mater), Northwestern University (where his Dad earned his M.D. in 1946), The University of Vermont where Dr. Frost earned all his three degrees in physics, The LANL Foundation (https://www.lanlfoundation.org), and The IEEE Foundation.

On more of a moral plane, in October 2011 Dr. Frost was asked by the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) to draft a memorial tribute to his former mentor. This is to be published in 2012 by the National Academies Press in vol. 16 of the NAE’s Memorial Tributes series. This mentor, Wesley L. Nyborg who died in September 2011, is recognized in the draft submitted in late 2011 for technical and leadership contributions in research and education in academia, including high ethical standards. As part of these standards of conduct for himself, Prof, Nyborg exhibited a compassionate willingness to render hands-on aid to disabled STEM professionals within his circle of influence, helping them to get back on their feet. (This includes Dr. Frost.) His exemplary career will likely serve as an inspiring role model to upcoming STEM students that they can emulate for developing their own research and education careers.

A separate memorial tribute was published on another of Dr. Frost’s mentors, Dr. Frank W. Clinard, Jr., with lead author Kurt Sickafus of the Knoxville campus of the University of Tennessee and the other author being Dr. Frost. Citation is: Kurt Sickafus and Hal Frost (2017). Society News, "Frank W. Clinard Jr., authority on radiation damage, remembered." Materials Research Society (MRS) Bulletin 42: 683.

In other examples of social service in 2009-2011, Dr. Frost nominated researchers as candidates for:

1. A prestigious annual IEEE prize in radiation effects,
2. An honorary university degree from Dartmouth College, and
3. A newly advertised position of director of a research institute.

Besides the social outreach efforts mentioned in this section, his technical outreach from 2005 onward had shown that, indeed, his creativity, imagination, and courage as a physicist had not peaked in Period I of his research career but are peaking now in Period III -- as a ‘late bloomer.’ While that term is an English idiom, it is an entry at Wikipedia, and it also occurs in the educational research literature. In one example, it is applied to predicting the “long-term performance of minority and nonminority students in one state university.” Accordingly, a “late bloomer” hypothesis is mentioned in which minority students may show relatively greater improvement levels in the freshman year than nonminority students, the argument being made that minority students face the need to make unique adjustments to college life.

Another, more recent example applies to the medical profession with its two pathways for students to become scientists as well as physicians. In the fast-track pathway, students matriculating in medical school take combined M.D. and Ph.D. training to quickly become physician-scientists. In the other, slower one, students matriculate in medical school to earn M.D. degrees who then go on to complete their residencies and “clinical subspecialty training.” Then they go on to their Ph.D. studies and earn that degree as well. Both pathways are dual track, either in parallel or in series. These and other examples can be used to develop a “late bloomer” hypothesis for ‘single track’ research scientists (Ph.D. only) who are predisposed enough (as evidenced by prior medical or family history) to mental illness such as depression to acquire a major disability in mid career due, for example, to a lack of effective adaptive responses to work stress and to low learning speeds in fast-changing work environments.

Appendix 1: Disability Disclosure and Related Information as a Cautionary Tale

Data on and Definition of Disability

One billion people, or 15% of the world’s population, experience some form of disability...One-fifth of the estimated global total, or between 110 million and 190 million people, experience significant disabilities. (www.worldbank.org/en/topic/disability)

Disability comes from or is a functional impairment resulting from a physical, physiological or psychological disorder, illness or injury, substantially limiting at least one major life activity like thinking, learning, writing or working (as adapted and revised from parts (g)-(h) of 29 CFR 1630.2 for ADA/ADAAA). A psychological disability is developmental, psychiatric or intellectual, with remanent cognitive dysfunction after treatment. One’s disability can worsen via impact of others’ discrimination like indifference, ableism, biased diversity & inclusion (D&I), isolation, and forced layoffs with long-term unemployment.

Disability Disclosure

HMF’s 1st major depression onset in August 1963 due to sudden, unexpected break-up with girl friend led to leaving summer job under Wes Nyborg, then clinical intervention on voluntary basis at UVM Infirmary until almost not graduating from UVM in June 1964 due to resulting poor grades in senior year. Yet full recovery occurred in 1966 on active duty, aided by Col. Frank Carpenter.

Post-Ph.D. Disability History

Period 1: 10/1974–12/1989

Baseline with undisclosed disability yet hope of achieving fame as physicist. 5½ yr as permanent Technical Staff Member (TSM) at LANL.* Brilliant exploratory research (ER) results in some of his work such as at UVM, Penn State and LANL. HMF had full-time (FT) paid work 96% of period as PI or co-PI of funded projects. Output (in print, exclusive of talks): 11 peer-reviewed R&D journal papers + 1 book chapter + 3 U.S. patents + 7 conference proceedings papers + 25 DOE reports/briefings (with 46 co-authors).

Period II: 01/1990–03/2005

Career disruption via workplace absence 60% of time, by 2½ yr of no job after layoff in 11/95 + 4 sets of leave of absence (LOA) from LANL with 4½yr long-term (LT) disability insurance income (LTDII). Layoff & 3 LT LOA’s all led to administrative loss of Q Clearance authorizing HMF’s access to LANL workplaces, requiring a clearance reinstatement process 4 times. Disruption began as acute-depression work-stress response (WSR) disclosed in 01/90 to LANL which then authorized HMF to take 1yr LOA on LTDII for medical & hospital care. After 1yr back at work but now not as PI, HMF relapsed into depression, with 1 yr on 2^nd LOA/LTDII. Then HMF re-returned to work but now with no project funding nor pay raises. EAP helped HMF manage WSR, & MST-4 Group Leader’s 2 RIF notices to HMF were met by new jobs as in WX Division changing, though, in 09/95 to ESA Division that then unjustly placed HMF on 3rd RIF list. HMF had no job offer after 7 bids so LANL fired him in 11/95. In 1996 to get job back, HMF’s official grievance was heard by panel of 3 LANL peers, all finding 3rd RIF was due NOT to poor job performance but to moral preference HMF stated to his group leader to not work on nuclear bomb parts, thus recommending he be reinstated as a TSM employee. But LANL Director’s Office refused and rejected HMF’s appeal, banning him to no job for 3yr despite 25 more job bids save for ½ yr part-time contractor work. So HMF sued LANL, which settled with & hired him in 12/98 in very stressful 2 yr at-will operations job to help clean up low-level nuclear waste at LANL. On sick leave as short-term 3rd LOA to visit EAP to lower WSR, HMF was put on 4th LOA by clinical psychologist testing him improperly due to conflict of interest as EAP manager & then writing report for 09/99 memo signed by LANL clinic director declaring him not fit for duty. This barred HMF from his work site & sparked major depression recurrence leading to LTDII period in 4th LOA ended by HMF’s official termination in 01/01. Output (in print): 4 papers. HMF’s research output quantity was at career low.

Period III: 04/2005–now

Gradual transformation of HMF to becoming a more helpful and less self-centered person with better mental health, balance & self-esteem; less fear; and truer identity as pro bono servant of others. This change facilitated kinder social interactions with others, but did not help HMF to re-integrate into STEM workforce, nor provide much evidence until lately of some recovery of ability to think analytically by mathematical reasoning for framing technical problems & prospects for their solution. He was unpaid save for LTDII up to 05/08, then having a small retirement pension. Output (in print & online): No journal papers; 1 book article & 3 talks (1 as co-author), yet 13 technical reports & dozens of online comments urging more inclusion of older, mentally disabled persons in the accepted diversity spectrum. Viz., HMF urged better social justice for mentally disabled persons in STEM classroom, workplace, retirement & professional settings and challenged indifference & bias of abled workers. He also developed unpublished theories for new imaging contrast mechanisms for ultrasound & MRI; identified new STEM field of Generalized Radiation Effects Science and Technology (GREST); paid tribute to his mentors; and produced and disseminated white papers as on deeper mathematical basis to visualize & exploit differential geometry for materials state awareness.

Overall Comments, Including a Cautionary Tale

Major depression of 1963-1966 of HMF recurred in 1990 when he worked at LANL. Like crises followed, with disability-associated LOA’s & long-term unemployment. Accordingly, from 01/90 to required retirement in 05/08 at age 65, HMF’s potential to publish more papers & generate other output was cut by lack of opportunity to secure new ER grants & publish more papers reporting validation of his ideas. Those 18 yrs were in 2 parts, one of 7½ yr in 4 jobs (some part-time or unpaid, with work focus on operations), the later 10½ yr of not being in any paid job. A follow-on decade on retirement income only (05/08-06/18) yielded no change in status while chronic stress continued & further wore down his ability to function cognitively. All 28 years led to out-dated training & computer tools, lost contacts & poor confidence. HMF may have fully re-integrated into physics workforce if in crucial year of 1996 – HMF’s “golden hour” – his peers at or outside LANL who knew via the ‘grapevine’ of his plight & job search and saw through the smokescreen LANL had cast to hide its unjust late 1995 termination & 1999 removal of him from work (by declaring him in 09/99 as not fit for duty), had proactively offered to help him relocate to a healthier, more rewarding position.

But the bystanders did not do this, partly as his reputation was falsely tarnished by actions of LANL’s senior management. So, a tragic atrophy occurred in HMF’s ability to think logically by the scientific method, learned in his graduate physics research, that delayed society’s further return on its investment (ROI) of State, federal and private monies to fund his education & training as a physicist of early promise. Also, before 1990 HMF wrongly used that investment to advance his own interests before society’s, even to imagine his future as a LANL Fellow. Yet HMF corrected some of his mistakes & moved beyond personal pain of loss and discriminatory practices against him, to better add to society’s ROI on him by rising generatively from the ashes. He no longer ‘knocks’ himself or others (as at LANL & UC) but looks to a final restoration of his good name as a proper professional and productive human person serving chiefly the needs of others rather than his own. Key to personal transformation were values & virtues uniting resume and eulogy standards for both technical & moral achievement at even heroic levels, per David Brooks’ book, The Road to Character (Random House, New York, 2015).

Appendix 2: Two Ideas Proposed for Further Research

Recent Idea (unfunded)

HMF proposed a new medical ultrasound bioeffect mechanism (MUBEM), Solid-state mechanical shear-strain (SSMSS), distinct from 5 known for ultrasound causes of tissue change such as fluid-state mech. shear stress (FSMSS). As 6^th MUBEM, SSMSS is induced as an isochoric deformation in a solid of shear modulus of elasticity μ>0 subject to a static or bias creep force plus constant force of dynamic origins (“dynamic force”) called an elastodynamic (e-d) radiation force (ERF) resulting directly or indirectly from a Primary Radiation (PR) source, either a contacting or non-contacting ultrasonic transmitter transducer emitting high-amplitude (HA) longitudinal or extensional waves at center frequency ranging over 10⁴-10⁸ Hz, to cause non-cavitational, nearly isothermal effects like plane-specific yield, plastic flow & other damage. Unlike SSMSS & ERF, FSMSS is a boundary-layer acoustic (bla) effect linked to a constant Acoustic Rad. Force (ARF) from HA acoustic particle displacement u_bla in viscous fluid (with µ=0 & SSMSS=0).

Indirect SSMSS Experiments Done with Local-Contact Ultrasound Source (10⁴-10⁵ Hz)

Elastodynamic radiation from PR source of ultrasound travels as Secondary Radiation (SR) through waveguide to scatter resonantly as Tertiary Radiation (TR) from microbubble in viscid liquid to set up micro-streaming in its hydrodynamic boundary layer (HBL) and thus an FSMSS, via gradients in HA particle velocity v_bla. If erythrocyte flows thru HBL for particle displacement amplitude u_o≥u_co (critical threshold) for rupture of vulnerable viscoelastic (VE) plasma membrane, cell lysis occurs. FSMSS traction on external surface of VE membrane can act as local transient quaternary radiation source of e-d radiation (QR) setting up SSMSS inside membrane.

Direct SSMSS Exp’ts Done with Local-Contact Ultrasound Source (10⁴-10⁵ Hz)

Static + dynamic action of ultrasonic tapping Hertzian Contact (HC), with solid of isotropic µ, acting as a force at a point of a semi-infinite plate sets up circular loci of constant SSMSS amplitude via stress field obeying Eqs.(1) in UI73 paper & Eqs.(11) in physics dissertation, based on Article 33, pp.85-91 in Theory of Elasticity, 2nd ed. (McGraw-Hill Publishing Co., New York, 1951). Here, a Mason-horn indenter tip pressed with static force F_s on & normal to dry edge surface of thin VE plate of thickness h (with small contact area 2bh of half-width b) sets up elastic rad. force density SERF via yield & plastic flow in tiny mass of vol. ΔV=(π/2)hb² acting as TR source exer-ting ERF on sample vol. V>>ΔV. |ERF_be|_x1=∫_S |SERF_be|_x1 dA=F_a. Effective creep force: F_s’=F_s+<F_a> per scalar Hooke’s law |ERF|=K_eff (u_o–u_oo)=<F_a>=F_s’–F_s. Spring constant K_eff & tip displacement constant u_oo are found photoelastically and optically, resp. Tensor Hooke’s law in V- ΔV is: (Ť_be)_ij=λΘδ_ij+2µ(Š_be)_ij per Kronecker delta function δ_ij, dilatation Θ=Tr(Š_be) & Lamé parameter λ. Strain a is rank-2 Cauchy tensor like Eulerian Š_be for low-amplitude (LA) u_be with SSMSS=(Š_be)₁₂, but Lagrangian Green strain tensor for HA SSMSS. In nonlinear VE solid, SSMSS can remain as residual strain if F_a is turned off first.

Predictions for Exp’ts to Do with Noncontact- and Contact-Ultrasound Sources (10⁶-10⁸ Hz)

SSMSS effects are predicted for new experiments with MHz ultrasound beams based on FSMSS study of J. Wu, D. Chen, H.M. Langevin & W.L. Nyborg, Ultrasonics 52(3): 417-421 (2012), with optically measured approach speeds of ARF-attracted parallel fibers floating on H₂O to be replaced by photoelastic & μ-Raman/IR-spectroscopy data on strains near or in parallel ERF-bound graphite fibers embedded in strain-birefringent gel. Also, SSMSS may be cause of pulmonary capillary hemorrhage (PCH) as adverse bioeffect of medical ultrasound; see review of D.L. Miller, Ultrasound Med. Biol. 42(12): 2743–2757 (2016). Setting & annealing of residual SSMSS in solids exposed to tapping contact in AFM & continuous e-d waves in dual-beam imaging may be observed via experimental stress and strain analysis methods like photoelasticity. Underlying hypothesis: ERF is effective contact force, whether generated directly by contact force per se on external boundary of a solid or indirectly by interfacial or internal forces via remote momentum-transfer from MHz ultrasound beams.

Follow-on Idea (unfunded) of Materials State Awareness (MSA) Geometry in Solids

Material imperfections like slip bands, dislocations & cracking shift principal-stress (σ_i) trajectories, related to photoelastic isoclinics & derived from stress tensor Ť_be given in rectangular Cartesian coordinate system RCC with basis ê_i, transformed to Ť_be' (with SSMSS-related extrema [Ť_be']_i≠j) in RCC’ by pure rotation operator A for direction cosines. Inverse (matrix) tensor rule at given field point is [Ť_be] = [A]^T[Ť_be'][A] with transpose ^T. For 3D case & equilibrium, Cauchy tetrahedron use gives eigeneq. [Ť_be]■(ñ)_C = T_α(ñ)_c with eigenvalues T_α=σ_i=α found by secular equation and column vector (ñ)_C linked to Cartesian traction vector T=T_i ê_i=Tñ on inclined face of normal ñ. Elastodynamic power flow is (v_be)_R■[Ť_be]■(ñ)_C=T_α(v_be)_R■(ñ)_C, with row vector (v_be)_R. Spatial dependence of change in orientation of planes with maximum in-plane |SSMSS| is solved via set of partial differential eqns. for gradients in σ_i along hypersurface arc lengths, in orthogonal curvilinear coordinates of basis set (ê_α)_i with α or i=1,2,3. Relevant to in situ QNDE of additive manufacturing like 3D printing of parts plus prediction of shear crack propagation in them (& dental teeth) if SSMSS exceeds critical value near arrested crack.