Emeritus Professor of Physics
University of Tennessee
Monday, August 11, 2025
In 1940 Oak Ridge did not exist and UT had no PhD programs. Much has changed in the last 80 years as UT and the federal facilities in Oak Ridge have grown enormously and in many examples jointly. The UT partnership with Oak Ridge National Laboratory is unique in the country. Some of the history of this partnership will be discussed, along with the benefits that have come to each institution. This topic is explored in detail in a new book published in 2024 by UT Press: Critical Connections: The University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge from the Dawn of the Atomic Age to the Present, by Lee Riedinger, Al Ekkebus, Ray Smith, and William Bugg.
Lee Riedinger got his physics PhD from Vanderbilt in 1968 after spending two years working on dissertation research at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He joined the University of Tennessee Physics faculty in 1971 and served there until his retirement in 2019.
His field is experimental nuclear physics and he led many experiments at accelerators at ORNL and other labs in the U.S. and Europe. He was the UT vice chancellor for research three different times and directed the UT/ORNL Science Alliance in the 1980s.
Reidinger was one of the leaders of the initiative at UT to team with Battelle and bid on the contract to manage ORNL, which succeeded as the UT-Battelle LLC tenure at ORNL began in 2000. He served on this management team from 2000 to 2006, the first four years as the deputy director for science and technology.
He returned to UT in 2006 and next started the UT/ORNL Bredesen Center in 2010 and its two new interdisciplinary PhD programs, which he directed until his retirement.
Locally available at
Addison’s, 126 S. Gay Str, Knoxville, TN 37902
Union Ave Books, 517 Union Ave, Knoxville, TN 37902
Barnes & Noble, 8029 Kingston Pike, Knoxville, TN 37919
Lee Riedinger is former vice chancellor for research at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
Al Ekkebus is a former outreach leader for neutron science at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Ray Smith is the Oak Ridge historian, formerly at Y-12.
William Bugg is former head of the Physics Department at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
“The future of the Clinton Laboratories [now ORNL] at Oak Ridge was much less clear [than that of other facilities]. The General Advisory Committee had concluded the laboratory was not worth saving. As Oppenheimer had told the Commissioners on March 30 [1947], ‘Most of us think that the evidence is in that Clinton will not live even if it is built up.’” From: Atomic Shield: A History of the Atomic Energy Commission, by Richard G. Hewlett and Francis Duncan, cited in the ORNL Review Blog.
“There are people in Oak Ridge who know more about Oak Ridge than Lee Riedinger does, there are people at UT who know more about UT than Lee Riedinger does, but no one has as much knowledge about both UT and Oak Ridge as Lee Riedinger.” Soren Sorensen, UT professor and then head of the UT Physics Department, quoted in the Daily Beacon, Sep 12, 2006
“One of the nicest and most gracious individuals we have ever known has announced plans to retire … . The position from which he is retiring — inaugural Director of UT Knoxville’s Bredesen Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Education — is one into which he has literally poured his heart and soul. Riedinger was part of the UT and ORNL team that helped conceive the idea to use both institutions as a way to attract more top flight graduate students to the region, and it has clearly achieved that goal.” Tom Ballard, Technovation.biz, Oct 29, 2018
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