Professor James F. Woodward, a pioneering physicist and historian known for his groundbreaking work on propellantless propulsion, passed away on August 9, 2025, at the age of 84.
Born in 1941, Woodward dedicated much of his academic career to California State University, Fullerton, where he served as professor emeritus of history and adjunct professor of physics. He gained international recognition for researching the Mach Effect Gravity Assist (MEGA) drive, a theoretical reactionless propulsion system based on Mach’s principle, which aimed to revolutionize space travel by enabling acceleration without traditional fuel. His research, often conducted in collaboration with Dr. Hal Fearn, included NASA-funded experiments and culminated in his 2012 book, Making Starships and Stargates: The Science of Interstellar Transport and Absurdly Benign Wormholes. Though controversial, Woodward’s ideas inspired generations of scientists exploring advanced propulsion technologies.
He is survived by his loving partner, Carole, and a close circle of friends and colleagues. Woodward will be remembered for his intellectual curiosity, experimental rigor, and kindness.
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A Remembrance from Dr. Hal Fearn, retired professor of physics at CSU Fullerton
Professor Emeritus Jim Woodward, Born James Francis Woodward on 22 December 1941, died 9th Aug 2025.
Jim earned B.S. and M.S. degrees in physics at Middlebury College and New York University, respectively, in the early 1960’s. From his undergraduate days his chief interest was in gravitation and methods of propulsion. Gravitation was not then a very popular topic, so for his PhD he switched fields to the history of science, writing a dissertation on the history of attempts to deal with the problem of action-at-a-distance in gravitational theory from the 17th to the early 20th century. His PhD in history of science was at the University of Denver in 1972. Soon after Jim took a teaching job in the history department of California State University Fullerton (CSUF) and has been there ever since. Shortly after arriving at Fullerton, he established friendships with colleagues in the physics department, who helped him to set up a small tabletop lab experiment, doing off-beat experiments in gravitational physics relating to Mach effects and propulsion, which have continued to this day. Jim retired from teaching in 2005 but continued to work in his small lab right up until the end.
I met Jim for the first time when I joined the physics dept in the Fall of 1991. Our first interaction was a hiking trip, with several physics department colleagues up the nearby Mt. Baldy. I learned that Jim loved to hike mountains and take photos. I didn’t really pay much attention to Jim’s work until much later, in 2011. He had been moved into my lab space, and I wasn’t all that pleased. He was a bit “messy” and tended to cough a lot, which I found distracting, plus his vacuum pump was very loud. When I mentioned it, the next week he had encased the vacuum pump in a sound damping box so as not to disturb me in my office next door. (This turned out to be beneficial in more ways than one, since damping the pump vibrations helped to boost the Mach effect signal over the noise threshold.)
I found out he had cancer, and the coughing was due to medications he was taking for the disease. It was unusual that he was working at the physics department even though retired from his history department role. More than a little curious I eventually learned he was doing propulsion experiments using accelerating piezoelectric crystals and he was getting a force signal – a fairly big one, well above noise!
I couldn’t believe it. That’s when I asked to collaborate on his research and examined this work seriously for the first time.
I admired Jim’s energy and optimism. In 2016 I helped to organize an advanced propulsion workshop in Estes Park, Colorado, in honor of Jim’s 75th birthday. The proceedings were published as a leather bound volume for attendees, and a PDF version is available on the Space Studies Institute’s website (https://ssi.org/2016-breakthrough-propulsion-proceedings/ ).
There were 3 more workshops after that, each year held in different locations, including at The Aerospace Corporation, El Segundo, California. Growing our team to include several new members, under the auspices of the Space Studies Institute, we were awarded two NASA NIAC grants for a Phase 1 and Phase 2 effort. These NIAC grants were the first ever NASA awards for interstellar propulsion work – a breakthrough – and it was because of Jim’s advocacy and work.
I think those advanced workshops really opened my eyes as to how many people were really working in advanced or exotic propulsion methods. We brought advanced propulsion people working from all over the world and got them together to discuss topics in one place. Until I met Jim, I had not heard of anyone working in the field. We had the pleasure of working with some wonderful people.
Jim was an experimentalist, and I am a theoretical physicist, so we had different natures and perspectives, arguing and debating all the details of our work, but to balance that out Jim was always a friend, always optimistic, very determined and one of the humblest people you could ever wish to meet. He had a very kind nature, always wanting to explain his research and encourage others to join in. He had a great love for science. Even when his health began to seriously fail and he needed dual canes to walk, he still came into the lab regularly. Despite both health and technical challenges Jim was always optimistic. He never gave up the dream of interstellar travel.
When the physics department expanded a few years later and we had to move the lab downstairs, I put up a mountain view wall mural for him, because his hiking days were over by then. I worked with him until I retired myself in August 2023 and moved to Oregon. Jim was both my colleague and my friend, and he will be greatly missed by myself and many others. I hope now that he has joined with the “Great Spirit” and that he finally knows all the answers and is exploring the universe with kindred spirits. I wish you well Jim – happy travels.
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From SSI President Emeritus Gary C Hudson
When I was 10 years old, I read Arthur C. Clarke’s Profiles of the Future, in which there is a chapter titled “Space, the Unconquerable.” The last paragraph of that chapter reads “No man will ever turn homeward from beyond Vega, to greet those he knew and loved on Earth.” That is because Vega is 26 light years away, and a human lifetime doesn’t really allow a round trip, traveling at less than light speed. Of course, when you’re 10 years old you don’t want to be told you can’t do something. So, twelve years later, I had the opportunity to sit with Arthur for an evening his Theater Arts Club in London, and we talked about spaceflight and related subjects. I remember that conversation pretty distinctly, and the one thing I did say to him is that I wanted to prove him wrong on that “Vega” point.
Instead of him patting me on the head, as a 22 year old, wet behind the ears kid, I am eternally grateful that he said to me, “You may have a chance.”
Then he told me something else, which he later mentioned in some of his writing, and that was: “To be successful you need to find a physicist who will give you a straight answer to the question, what is inertia?”
Now I’m only a simple minded rocket plumber, but I remember Arthur’s words, and I want to say that the first physicist that I encountered who gave me a straight answer to the question “what is inertia” was Jim Woodward, in 2005.
Ad astra, per ardua, Jim.
– Gary C. Hudson
Photo of Jim Woodward in his lab 2024 courtesy of Tim Ventura
