 | This biography of a living person includes a list of references, related reading, or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations .(January 2021) |
Curtis Bruce Tarter (born September 26, 1939) is an American theoretical physicist. He was the director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory from 1994 to 2002. As director emeritus he recently published the first comprehensive history of the laboratory.
Tarter was born in Louisville, Kentucky, on September 26, 1939. He spent the subsequent WW II years with his mother and grandparents in Evanston, Illinois. while his father served in the Army Air Corps in India and China. After the war they returned to Louisville where he attended public schools.
He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a bachelor's degree in physics in 1961. He then went to Cornell University where he received a PhD in theoretical astrophysics. His thesis adviser was Ed Salpeter and his thesis research involved both accretion disks and the interaction of X-ray sources and the surrounding environments.
After a brief stint at the Aeronutronic Corporation in Newport Beach, California, he joined the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in 1967 where he would spend the remainder of his career. At LLNL he did research in astrophysics and in the fusion and nuclear weapons programs. In particular he became leader of the group involved with radiative properties of matter at high densities and temperatures and their application to various programs. His astrophysical research focused on quasars and X-ray sources, and he collaborated with colleagues at a number of universities and laboratories.
He became the head of the Theoretical Physics Division in 1978, and the deputy head of the Physics Department in 1983. He was a leader in strengthening the ties with the University of California and served on the Long Range Planning Committee that helped set the future direction of the laboratory. In 1988 he was chosen as the associate director for physics where he guided the lab's work in basic physics, space research, climate studies, and exploratory long-range research.
In 1994 he was selected as director of the laboratory, a position he held for eight years. His first challenge was to ensure the preservation of the laboratory and this was accomplished when President Clinton issued a proclamation stating that all three nuclear laboratories were necessary to maintain US nuclear weapons.
Over the next several years he led the laboratory in establishing its post-Cold War program, focusing primarily on science-based stockpile stewardship to replace nuclear testing. This entailed revitalizing the US supercomputer effort (in partnership with IBM) and overseeing the development of the National Ignition Facility, a three billion dollar construction project.
During he last years of his tenure as director he experienced the challenges of the Chinese espionage program, the creation of the National Nuclear Security Administration, a new government agency to oversee the laboratory's work, and the beginning of the Department of Homeland Security. His last act as director was to organize the laboratory's 50th anniversary celebration in 2002.
After his formal retirement he continued to represent the laboratory on a number of task forces and commissions. He served on the Defense Science Board, the board of Draper Laboratory, several National Academy of Sciences studies, and the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States. In parallel he began to work on the history of the laboratory through many oral interviews with those who had contributed in the past. This effort eventually led to his publishing in 2018, The American Lab: An Insider's History of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
He was named a fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the California Council on Science and Technology. He received the Roosevelt's Gold Medal Award for Science, the National Nuclear Security Administration Gold Medal, and the Secretary of Energy's Gold Award.
Edward Teller was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist and chemical engineer who is known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb" and one of the creators of the Teller–Ulam design.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is a federally funded research and development center in Livermore, California, United States. Originally established in 1952, the laboratory now is sponsored by the United States Department of Energy and administered privately by Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC.
This timeline of nuclear fusion is an incomplete chronological summary of significant events in the study and use of nuclear fusion.
The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is a laser-based inertial confinement fusion (ICF) research device, located at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, United States. NIF's mission is to achieve fusion ignition with high energy gain. It achieved the first instance of scientific breakeven controlled fusion in an experiment on December 5, 2022, with an energy gain factor of 1.5. It supports nuclear weapon maintenance and design by studying the behavior of matter under the conditions found within nuclear explosions.
Michael Anastasio led two national science laboratories during a time of transition. He was the director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and president of the Los Alamos National Security LLC, the company that operates the laboratory. He is the former director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). The University of California Board of Regents appointed Michael R. Anastasio the director of LLNL on June 4, 2002. He started on July 1, 2002. In 2005 he became the president of the Los Alamos National Security LLC, and became the director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory on June 1, 2006. During his directorship at Lawrence Livermore, the laboratory won 25 R&D 100 Awards and maintained its world-class leadership position in high-performance computing and its application to global climate modeling.
The National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), is a high-performance computing (supercomputer) National User Facility operated by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for the United States Department of Energy Office of Science. As the mission computing center for the Office of Science, NERSC houses high performance computing and data systems used by 9,000 scientists at national laboratories and universities around the country. Research at NERSC is focused on fundamental and applied research in energy efficiency, storage, and generation; Earth systems science, and understanding of fundamental forces of nature and the universe. The largest research areas are in High Energy Physics, Materials Science, Chemical Sciences, Climate and Environmental Sciences, Nuclear Physics, and Fusion Energy research. NERSC's newest and largest supercomputer is Perlmutter, which debuted in 2021 ranked 5th on the TOP500 list of world's fastest supercomputers.
The Department of Applied Science at the University of California, Davis was a cooperative academic program involving the University of California, Davis and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). It was established in the fall of 1963 by Edward Teller, director of LLNL, and Roy Bainer, then dean of the UC Davis College of Engineering. The department was discontinued in 2011.
Richard Freeman Post was an American physicist notable for his work in nuclear fusion, plasma physics, magnetic mirrors, magnetic levitation, magnetic bearing design and direct energy conversion.
Fusion ignition is the point at which a nuclear fusion reaction becomes self-sustaining. This occurs when the energy being given off by the reaction heats the fuel mass more rapidly than it cools. In other words, fusion ignition is the point at which the increasing self-heating of the nuclear fusion removes the need for external heating. This is quantified by the Lawson criterion. Ignition can also be defined by the fusion energy gain factor.
Omar Hurricane is a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in the thermonuclear and inertial confinement fusion design division. Prior to Lawrence Livermore, he worked at the UCLA Institute of Plasma & Fusion Research. His research focuses on weapons physics, high energy density physics (HEDP) science, the theory of plasmas, and plasma instability.
John Hopkin Nuckolls is an American physicist who worked his entire career at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He is best known for the development of inertial confinement fusion, which is a major branch of fusion power research to this day. He was also the lab's director from 1988 until 1994, when he resigned to become an associate director at large. He was awarded the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award in 1969, the James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics in 1981 and the Edward Teller Award in 1991.
Carol Travis Alonso is a Canadian-born American physicist, author and horsewoman. She was a co-discoverer of Element 106, Seaborgium, with Nobel laureate Glenn Seaborg and other team members at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
The Edward Teller Award is an award presented every two years by the American Nuclear Society for "pioneering research and leadership in the use of laser and ion-particle beams to produce unique high-temperature and high-density matter for scientific research and for controlled thermonuclear fusion". It was established in 1999 and is named after Edward Teller. The award carries a $2000 cash prize and an engraved silver medal.
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Ryutov is a Russian theoretical plasma physicist.
John D. Lindl is an American physicist who specializes in inertial confinement fusion (ICF). He is currently the chief scientist of the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Kimberly Susan Budil is an American physicist who is the 13th and current director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, making her the first woman to hold this position. She completed her bachelor's degree in physics from the University of Illinois Chicago, and her master's and doctorate in applied science from the University of California, Davis. She collaborated with Nobel laureate Donna Strickland, and made significant contributions to the field of high-power, ultra-fast lasers. Starting her career at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 1987, she held various roles across government departments, including the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense. In 2014, she managed relations between the University of California's campuses and the three Department of Energy labs it manages. Budil, who was made a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2019, has also been a prominent advocate for women in science.
Arthur Kent Kerman was a Canadian-American nuclear physicist, a fellow of the American Physical Society, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences. He was a professor emeritus of physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Theoretical Physics (CTP) and Laboratory for Nuclear Science He was known for his work on the theory of the structure of nuclei and on the theory of nuclear reactions.
The history of nuclear fusion began early in the 20th century as an inquiry into how stars powered themselves and expanded to incorporate a broad inquiry into the nature of matter and energy, as potential applications expanded to include warfare, energy production and rocket propulsion.
Sharon Gail Glendinning is an American experimental physicist.
Andrea Lynn "Annie" Kritcher is an American nuclear engineer and physicist who works at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. She was responsible for the development of Hybrid-E, a capsule that enables inertial confinement fusion. She was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2022.