CHAMPAIGN — Roy Axford has been a professor at the University of Illinois for 50 years, and he has no plans to stop.
The 87-year-old Axford works in the Department of Nuclear, Plasma and Radiological Engineering. He was honored Thursday.
Axford said that the tradition in his family is to work for a lifetime.
He continues to teach a full load of classes.
And he has a growing list of students who say he helped shape their lives. One of them, Scott Ramsey, works at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and is one of about a dozen Axford students at the prestigious facility. Ramsey says without Axford he would never have gotten the job.
Axford’s wife, Anne, says her husband just loves to teach.