Deborah K. Watson

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Deborah Kay Watson
Alma materAllegheny College Harvard University
Known forMany-body problem in quantum mechanics
AwardsEdith Kinney Gaylord Presidential Professorship

Regents' Award for Superior Research & Creative Activity

Fellow of the American Physical Society

Contents

Scientific career
InstitutionsUniversity of Oklahoma

Deborah Kay Watson is an American physicist known for her work on the many-body problem in quantum mechanics. [1] She is a professor emerita of physics at the University of Oklahoma. [2]

Education and career

Watson is a 1972 graduate of Allegheny College and completed her Ph.D. in chemistry in 1977 at Harvard University. [2] Her dissertation was in two parts, I. Time-dependent Hartree–Fock studies of small molecular systems and II. Adiabatic and resonance states of Li2 and dissociative recombination of Li2+, and was supervised by Alexander Dalgarno. [3]

Watson was a postdoctoral researcher in chemistry at the California Institute of Technology before joining the University of Oklahoma faculty. [4] She served two terms as chair of the Theoretical Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics Community of the American Physical Society (APS), in 2005–2006 and 2006–2007. [5] She retired from the University of Oklahoma in 2016. [6]

Recognition

In 1978, Watson's various contribution in research and creative activities at the University of Oklahoma was recognized through the Regents' Award for Superior Research & Creative Activity. [7]

She was also named the Edith Kinney Gaylor Presidential Professor of Physics at the University of Oklahoma in 2004. [8]

In 2020 she was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society, after a nomination from the APS Division of Atomic, Molecular & Optical Physics, "for the innovative use of group theory and graphical techniques toward the solution of the quantum many-body problem". [1]

References

  1. 1 2 "2020 Fellows nominated by the Division of Atomic, Molecular & Optical Physics", APS Fellows Archive, retrieved 2020-11-10
  2. 1 2 Deborah Watson, professor, emeritus, University of Oklahoma Homer L. Dodge Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, retrieved 2020-11-10
  3. ↑ Deborah K. Watson at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  4. ↑ Information for students (PDF), Caltech, 1979–1980, p. 100, retrieved 2020-11-10
  5. ↑ List of Chairs and Secretaries of TAMOC, APS Division of Atomic, Molecular & Optical Physics, retrieved 2020-11-10
  6. ↑ List of Retirees for 2016, University of Oklahoma College of Arts and Sciences, retrieved 2020-11-10
  7. ↑ "Deborah K. Watson awarded the Regents' Award for Superior Research & Creative Activity" (PDF){{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  8. ↑ "Faculty honored" (PDF), Φyast Φlyer, vol. 12, no. 2, University of Oklahoma Homer L. Dodge Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, p. 2, Spring 2004
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