Charles 'Charley' W. Myles

Charles Wesley (“Charley”) Myles was born November 21, 1947 in Bethesda, MD to Clyde W. Myles and Mary A. (Ozmun) Myles. He was their third child and first son. His father was in the Navy and the family moved around a few times in Charley’s childhood before settling in Kirkwood, MO, a suburb of St. Louis.

Charley graduated from Kirkwood High School in 1965 and enrolled in the University of Missouri at Rolla (UMR), from which he graduated with a BS in Physics in 1969. While at UMR, Charley was an active member of the Delta Sigma Phi fraternity. At UMR, he met his future wife, Barbara Jean (Pierce) Myles on a blind date - she was the best friend of his roommate’s girlfriend. They married in June 1969.

Charley then attended graduate school at Washington University in St. Louis, earning MS (1971) and PhD (1973) degrees in Physics. After graduate school, Charley and Barbara moved to Columbus, Ohio for his first postdoctoral fellowship at Battelle Memorial Institute (1973-1975). Subsequent postdoctoral fellowships followed at l’École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland (1975-1977) and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1977-1978). While living in Switzerland, Charley and Barbara celebrated the birth of their first child, Chris, in 1976. In Illinois in 1978, their second child, Steve, was born.

Just after the birth of their second child, the young family moved to Lubbock, TX, where Charley started a tenure-track faculty position in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Texas Tech University. He served in that department for the remainder of his career, ultimately retiring in 2022 after 51 years as a professional physicist, with 44 of those spent at Texas Tech. During his academic career, he supervised the research of 18 PhD students between Texas Tech and the University of Southern California, 11 master’s students between TTU and EPFL, as well as somewhere in the mid-thousands of undergraduates. Additionally, he served as both graduate and undergraduate advisor on more than one occasion, and was chair of the department from 1991-1998. Over the course of his academic career, Charley published more than 160 papers and presented at a variety of national and international conferences on topics related to solid state semiconductor theory. To this day, one or more of his many publications is cited by someone in the field at least weekly.

Outside of academia, Charley was an Eagle Scout who, as an adult, served for many years as a Scoutmaster with Lubbock Troops 543 and 505. He also held numerous lay leadership positions at Agapé United Methodist Church (now Agapé Global Methodist Church).

Charley is preceded in death by his parents, Clyde and Mary Myles, his beloved wife Barbara Myles, and his elder sister Marilynn Fitzpatrick.

He is survived by: his son Chris and daughter-in-law Kristen Myles of Long Beach, CA; his only grandchild K Myles of Long Beach, CA; his son Steve and daughter-in-law Elizabeth Myles of Houston, TX; his sister Barbara Griffiths of Riverside, CA; his brother Doug and sister-in-law Judy Myles of Bentonville, AR; his numerous nieces and nephews; and his many friends and colleagues in Lubbock and around the world.

A funeral service will take place at Agapé Global Methodist Church, 1215 Slide Road, Lubbock, TX 79416, on November 7, 2026 at 10:00am. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that a donation be made in his honor to the Charles W. and Barbara J. Myles Graduate Scholarship in Physics at Texas Tech University, the Charles W. and Barbara J. Myles Graduate Scholarship in Physics at Missouri University of Science and Technology, or Blood Cancer United.