Eric Wollman, professor of physics, isn't sure how he first began to think differently about the universe than most scientists. But he's pretty sure that seven years in graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley, during the Vietnam War, encouraged him to think differently.

Since coming to Bates in 1979, Wollman has studied what the universe is actually made of and what conditions might have been like during its early evolution. Since the late 1970s, he says, it has been widely believed that visible matter is only a few percent of the total matter in the universe. The rest is called dark matter because it cannot be seen directly and its presence is known from its gravitational influence on matter that is seen.

Most cosmologists think that the dark matter is something exotic — a type of matter that has not yet been detected on Earth. Wollman's hypothesis is mundane — and some might say — heretical. He thinks the dark matter is small rocks. Wollman also says the universe started out cold, not hot, a picture, Wollman says, that explains of a variety of phenomena more simply and more unified than does the standard hot big bang theory.

Wollman values the atmosphere at Bates, where he has been encouraged to continue to think differently. "When I first came here I felt — and I was right — that Bates was a place where I could work on the ideas that I wanted to work on," Wollman said. Wollman has also published research in the areas of astronomical infrared spectroscopy, infrared instrumentation and plasma physics.