 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(January 2017) |
Gerald Dennis Mahan (born November 24, 1937, died November 21, 2021, age 83) was an American condensed matter physicist, with specific research interests in transport and optical properties of materials, and solid-state devices. He was a fellow of the American Physical Society. [1]
Mahan earned a B.A. in physics in 1959 at Harvard University, and a Ph.D. in physics at the University of California, Berkeley in 1964.
Mahan has worked at General Electric Research Laboratory (1963–1967), and has been a professor of physics at the University of Oregon (1967–1973), Indiana University (1973–1984), University of Tennessee (1984–2001), and Pennsylvania State University (2001–present). He has also worked at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (1984–2001).
Born in Portland, Oregon Mahan graduated valedictorian from Franklin High School. He studied physics at Harvard University and graduated magna cum laude in 1959. In 1964, under John Hopfield at the University of California, Berkeley he received his PhD in physics for explaining linear dispersion in excitations. Upon graduation he became a research scientist at General Electric's Corporate Research Laboratory. He worked full-time for General Electric until 1967 and then spent another 28 years working for them part-time (one of the longest part time continuous relationships in GE research history). While at GE he pioneered the application of mathematical techniques developed by three Russians (Abrikosov, Gorkov and Dzyaloshinskii) to adapt Green's functions to theoretical solid-state physics. The solutions using this method challenged the conventional wisdom. The x-ray edge theory was part of this work. The results produced using this method, while controversial at the time, were almost universally supported by later experimental results and eventually became accepted as fundamental mathematical techniques. Charles Duke worked closely with Mahan while they were both at GE and learned and applied these techniques leading to discoveries in the tunneling of electrons across semiconductor diodes. He is quoted in an interview as saying that "basically, Gerry taught me solid-state physics". [2]
In 1967, Mahan became a professor of physics at the University of Oregon. While at Oregon he continued his work on the x-ray edge and expanded it to include surface science and the microscopic theory of dielectrics. He was awarded a Research Fellowship from the Alfred Sloan Foundation and spent 1970 working at the Cavendish Laboratory of Cambridge University, England. Mahan became a professor at Indiana University in 1973. During his tenure at Indiana, he expanded his areas of work to include varistors, which he did in conjunction with colleagues from GE. He developed mathematical models that explained how varistors function (they are extremely non-linear devices) leading to substantial improvements in their effectiveness. He worked closely with Lloyd Chase and did the first Raman scattering of beta-alumina which is used to make high-density solid-state batteries. He continued to expand his areas of interest and co-invented the time-dependent local density approximation (TDLDA) which built on Walter Kohn's work inventing local density approximation (LDA). He later wrote a book on the subject with Kumble Subbaswammy (a former PhD student) titled Local Density Theory of Polarizability. Subbaswammy is currently the Chancellor of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Mahan was committed to the development of scientific talent and had several post doctorate students while at Indiana. These included Steven Girvin (postdoc for 2 years from 1977 to 1978), Wilfried Haensch (postdoc for 2 years from 1981 to 1982), [3] William Pardee, Ji-Wie Wu, Mats Jonson and Petter Minnhagen. Steven Girvin, who, like Mahan, received his PhD under the guidance of John Hopfield, won in 2007 the Oliver E. Buckley Prize of the American Physical Society and is the Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics at Yale University. [4] Wilfried Haensch did pioneering work with Mahan explaining the "current drag" problem in semi-conductors and separate work with Mahan using new analytical methods to explain the Quantum Bolzmann Equation (QBE) which describes the transport of electricity in heat and solids. During his tenure at Indiana, he was invited by Stig Lundqvist of Chalmers University and the Niels Bohr Institute to spend a sabbatical year working at Chalmers in Göteborg, Sweden. This fostered a long collaboration with Chalmers and Swedish physics. In 1984 the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory created a joint Distinguished Scientist program to raise the quality and profile of science in Tennessee. Mahan was recruited as the first member of that program and moved to Tennessee. He continued his research but spent much of his time as a research manager. During Lamar Alexander's tenure as President of the University of Tennessee, he recruited Mahan to teach freshman physics, which he did for ten years. At that time, there were not many members of the National Academy of Science teaching freshman physics. In 2001, Mahan was recruited to join the faculty of Penn State University as a distinguished professor. He expanded his areas of expertise to include thermoelectrics and thermal transport systems in nanotubes. He worked with Peter Eklund on vibrational properties of carbon nanotubes and silicon nanowires. He retired from Penn State in 2016 and served as an adjunct professor at the Massachusetts Institute Technology from 2016 until 2020.
Mahan was recognized for his pioneering work. He was elected as a fellow of the American Physical Society (1974), member of the National Academy of Sciences (1995), American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2005), foreign member of the Royal Society of Arts and Sciences - Göteborg, Sweden (2008), and Erasmus Mundas Lecturer of the European Union (2011). He received an honorary doctorate from Chalmers University, Goteborg Sweden in 2016.
Later in his career, Mahan served as a leader of scientific organizations both in the United States and globally. He served as a general councilor (board of directors) of the American Physical Society. He served as secretary (head) of Section III of the National Academy of Science. Section III includes Applied Math, Computer Science, Engineering and Applied Physical Science. He also served as secretary of Section 33 (Applied Physical Science). He served as the first chairman of the International Centre for Condensed Matter Physics (ICCMP) in Brasilia, Brazil. In his role as chairman of ICCMP he traveled relentlessly to foster collaboration between South American and US and European physicists.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link).{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
Steven Weinberg was an American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate in physics for his contributions with Abdus Salam and Sheldon Glashow to the unification of the weak force and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles.
Samuel Chao Chung Ting is an American physicist who, with Burton Richter, received the Nobel Prize in 1976 for discovering the subatomic J/ψ particle.
Kenneth Geddes "Ken" Wilson was an American theoretical physicist and a pioneer in leveraging computers for studying particle physics. He was awarded the 1982 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on phase transitions—illuminating the subtle essence of phenomena like melting ice and emerging magnetism. It was embodied in his fundamental work on the renormalization group.
Mildred Dresselhaus, known as the "Queen of Carbon Science", was an American physicist, materials scientist, and nanotechnologist. She was an institute professor and professor of both physics and electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She also served as the president of the American Physical Society, the chair of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, as well as the director of science in the US Department of Energy under the Bill Clinton Government. Dresselhaus won numerous awards including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Medal of Science, the Enrico Fermi Award, the Kavli Prize and the Vannevar Bush Award.
David W. Snoke is a physics professor at the University of Pittsburgh in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. In 2006 he was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society "for his pioneering work on the experimental and theoretical understanding of dynamical optical processes in semiconductor systems." In 2004 he co-wrote a controversial paper with prominent intelligent design proponent Michael Behe. In 2007, his research group was the first to report Bose-Einstein condensation of polaritons in a trap. David Snoke and theoretical physicist Jonathan Keeling recently published an article announcing a new era for polariton condensates saying that polaritons are arguably the "...best hope for harnessing the strange effects of quantum condensation and superfluidity in everyday applications."
Mitsutaka Fujita was a Japanese physicist. He proposed the edge state that is unique to graphene zigzag edges. Also, he theoretically pointed out the importance and peculiarity of nanoscale and edge shape effects in nanographene. The theoretical concept of graphene nanoribbons was introduced by him and his research group to study the nanoscale effect of graphene. He was an associate professor at Tsukuba University, and died of a subarachnoid hemorrhage on March 18, 1998. His posthumous name is Rikakuin-Shinju-Houkou-Koji (理覚院深珠放光居士) in Japanese.
Subir Sachdev is Herchel Smith Professor of Physics at Harvard University specializing in condensed matter. He was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2014, and received the Lars Onsager Prize from the American Physical Society and the Dirac Medal from the ICTP in 2018. He was a co-editor of the Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics from 2017–2019.
Kam-Biu Luk is a professor of physics, with a focus on particle physics, at UC Berkeley and a senior faculty scientist in the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's physics division. Luk has conducted research on neutrino oscillation and CP violation. Luk and his collaborator Yifang Wang were awarded the 2014 Panofsky Prize "for their leadership of the Daya Bay experiment, which produced the first definitive measurement of θ13 angle of the neutrino mixing matrix." His work on neutrino oscillation also received 2016 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics shared with other teams. He also received a Doctor of Science honoris causa from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2016. Luk is a fellow of the American Physical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Antonio Helio de Castro Neto is a Brazilian-born physicist. He is the founder and director of the Centre for Advanced 2D Materials at the National University of Singapore. He is a condensed matter theorist known for his work in the theory of metals, magnets, superconductors, graphene and two-dimensional materials. He is a distinguished professor in the Departments of Materials Science Engineering, and Physics and a professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He was elected as a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2003. In 2011 he was elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
David Tománek (born July 1954) is a U.S.-Swiss physicist of Czech origin and researcher in nanoscience and nanotechnology. He is Emeritus Professor of Physics at Michigan State University. He is known for predicting the structure and calculating properties of surfaces, atomic clusters including the C60 buckminsterfullerene, nanotubes, nanowires and nanohelices, graphene, and two-dimensional materials including phosphorene.
Laura M. Roth is an American solid state physicist, and an American Physical Society Fellow.
Amnon Aharony is an Israeli Professor (Emeritus) of Physics in the School of Physics and Astronomy at Tel Aviv University, Israel and in the Physics Department of Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. After years of research on statistical physics, his current research focuses on condensed matter theory, especially in mesoscopic physics and spintronics. He is a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of several other academies. He also received several prizes, including the Rothschild Prize in Physical Sciences, and the Gunnar Randers Research Prize, awarded every other year by the King of Norway.
Albert Edward Caswell (1884–1954), was head of the department of physics at the University of Oregon from 1934 to 1949, a professor emeritus, and Fellow of the American Physical Society.
Tin-Lun "Jason" Ho is a Chinese-American theoretical physicist, specializing in condensed matter theory, quantum gases, and Bose-Einstein condensates. He is known for the Mermin-Ho relation.
Robert Otto Pohl is a German-American physicist, specializing in condensed matter physics topics such as solid state physics, thermal conductivity, and thin films, who is the Goldwin Smith Emeritus Professor of Physics at Cornell University where he has been on the faculty since the 1950s.
Eric George Adelberger is an American experimental nuclear physicist and gravitational metrologist.
Blayne Ryan Heckel is an American experimental physicist, known for his research involving precision measurements in atomic physics and gravitational physics. He is now a professor emeritus at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Gene Frederick Dresselhaus was an American condensed matter physicist. He is known as a pioneer of spintronics and for his 1955 discovery of the eponymous Dresselhaus effect.
Alvin Boyd Cardwell was an American experimental physicist, specializing in "thermionic and photoelectric emission of electrons from crystalline metals."
James Murle Cork was an American physicist, known for his research in nuclear physics and nuclear spectroscopy.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) (See author information.)| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
