Gregor Morfill

Last updated

Gregor Eugen Morfill
Born (1945-07-23) 23 July 1945 (age 78)
Oberhausen, Germany
NationalityGerman
Education Imperial College London (B.S., Ph.D.)
Awards
Scientific career
Fields Plasma physics, astrophysics, plasma medicine
Thesis  (1971)

Gregor Eugen Morfill (born 23 July 1945 in Oberhausen, Germany) is a German physicist who works in basic astrophysical research [1] and deals with complex plasmas [2] [3] and plasma medicine.

Contents

Early life and career

Gregor Morfill moved to England in 1961. There, he completed his school education and began studying physics at Imperial College London in 1964. In 1967, he graduated with a Bachelor of Science. In 1968, he received a diploma from Imperial College London and in 1971 he received a PhD with his work Satellite studies of energetic particles above the atmosphere. He then went to the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching. In 1977, he did his post-doctorate at Heidelberg University.

In 1975, he received a professorship at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg. In 1983, he headed the Theoretical Astronomy Program at the University of Arizona. In 1984, he became director of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics.

Since 2011, he has been on the scientific advisory board of Bauman University in Moscow. In the same year, he was co-founder of the company terraplasma in Garching near Munich, which develops devices and processes that use cold plasmas for wound healing, among other things. [4]

Scientific contributions

Morfill is the author and co-author of over 500 scientific publications [5] [6] and a popular science book on chaos theory. [7]

In addition to his astrophysical work, Gregor Morfill makes important contributions to the subject of "dusty complex plasmas" (with application to space plasmas and the explanation of the structure of Saturn rings), to the discovery of plasma crystals as a solid state of aggregation of dusty plasmas (discovered in 1994) [8] [9] and to microscopic analysis of the melting process in plasma crystals. He also participates in space plasma experiments with the International Space Station (ISS), such as the experiment PKE-Nefedov (2001–2005) in cooperation with the Russian space agency and the Institute for High Energy Densities (IHED, JIHT) in Moscow. [10] Morfill also researches applications of plasma in medicine such as in the treatment of chronic wounds. [11] [12]

Honors and awards

Related Research Articles

The λ (lambda) universality class is a group in condensed matter physics. It regroups several systems possessing strong analogies, namely, superfluids, superconductors and smectics. All these systems are expected to belong to the same universality class for the thermodynamic critical properties of the phase transition. While these systems are quite different at the first glance, they all are described by similar formalisms and their typical phase diagrams are identical.

Jozef T. Devreese was a Belgian scientist, with a long career in condensed matter physics. He was professor emeritus of theoretical physics at the University of Antwerp. He died on November 1, 2023.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marvin L. Cohen</span> American physicist

Marvin Lou Cohen is an American–Canadian theoretical physicist. He is a physics professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Cohen is a leading expert in the field of condensed matter physics. He is widely known for his seminal work on the electronic structure of solids.

Dissipative solitons (DSs) are stable solitary localized structures that arise in nonlinear spatially extended dissipative systems due to mechanisms of self-organization. They can be considered as an extension of the classical soliton concept in conservative systems. An alternative terminology includes autosolitons, spots and pulses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Ceperley</span>

David Matthew Ceperley is a theoretical physicist in the physics department at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign or UIUC. He is a world expert in the area of Quantum Monte Carlo computations, a method of calculation that is generally recognised to provide accurate quantitative results for many-body problems described by quantum mechanics.

Daniel L. Stein is an American physicist and Professor of Physics and Mathematics at New York University. From 2006 to 2012 he served as the NYU Dean of Science.

Eric R. Weeks is an American physicist. He completed his B.Sc. at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1992. He obtained a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Texas at Austin in 1997, working under Harry Swinney, and later completed post-doctoral research with David Weitz and Arjun Yodh at Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania. He is currently a full professor at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PK-3 Plus (ISS experiment)</span>

The Plasmakristall-3 Plus laboratory was a joint Russian-German laboratory for the investigation of dusty/complex plasmas on board the International Space Station (ISS), with the principal investigators at the German Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics and the Russian Institute for High Energy Densities. It was the successor to the PKE Nefedov experiment with improvements in hardware, diagnostics and software. The laboratory was launched in December 2005 and was operated for the first time in January 2006. It was used in 21 missions until it was deorbited in 2013. It is succeeded by the PK-4 Laboratory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edward Ott</span> American physicist

Edward Ott is an American physicist most noted for his contributions to the development of chaos theory.

Jochen Küpper FRSC is a German chemist and physicist, group leader at the Center for Free-Electron Laser Science, Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY, and Professor of Physics and Professor by courtesy of Chemistry at the University of Hamburg, Germany.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carlos Lousto</span>

Carlos O. Lousto is a Distinguished Professor in the School of Mathematical Sciences in Rochester Institute of Technology, known for his work on black hole collisions.

Tihiro Ohkawa was a Japanese physicist whose field of work was in plasma physics and fusion power. He was a pioneer in developing ways to generate electricity by nuclear fusion when he worked at General Atomics. Ohkawa died September 27, 2014, in La Jolla, California, at the age of 86.

Bernstein–Greene–Kruskal modes are nonlinear electrostatic waves that propagate in a collisionless plasma. They are nonlinear solutions to the Vlasov-Poisson system of equations in plasma physics, and are named after physicists Ira B. Bernstein, John M. Greene, and Martin D. Kruskal, who solved and published the exact solution for the one-dimensional unmagnetized case in 1957.

Guy Laval is a French physicist, professor at the École polytechnique and member of the French Academy of Sciences.

William Henry Matthaeus is an American astrophysicist and plasma physicist. He is known for his research on turbulence in magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) and astrophysical plasmas, for which he was awarded the 2019 James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics.

Patrick Henry Diamond is an American theoretical plasma physicist. He is currently a professor at the University of California, San Diego, and a director of the Fusion Theory Institute at the National Fusion Research Institute in Daejeon, South Korea, where the KSTAR Tokamak is operated.

Patrick Mora is a French theoretical plasma physicist who specializes in laser-plasma interactions. He was awarded the 2014 Hannes Alfvén Prize and 2019 Edward Teller Award for his contributions to the field of laser-plasma physics.

Toshiki Tajima is a Japanese theoretical plasma physicist known for pioneering the laser wakefield acceleration technique with John M. Dawson in 1979. The technique is used to accelerate particles in a plasma and was experimentally realized in 1994, for which Tajima received several awards such as the Nishina Memorial Prize (2006), the Enrico Fermi Prize (2015), the Robert R. Wilson Prize (2019), the Hannes Alfvén Prize (2019) and the Charles Hard Townes Award (2020).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Victor Malka</span> French physicist (born 1960)

Victor Malka is a French plasma physicist and a pioneer in laser plasma acceleration. In 2004, Malka demonstrated that high energy monoenergetic electron beams could be generated using the technique of laser wakefield acceleration, and subsequently used them to develop compact X-ray and gamma radiation sources with applications in medicine, security technology and phase-contrast imaging. For these contributions to the field, he was awarded the IEEE Particle Accelerator Science and Technology Award in 2007, the Julius Springer Prize for Applied Physics in 2017, and the Hannes Alfvén Prize in 2019.

Hartmut Löwen is a German physicist working in the field of statistical mechanics and soft matter physics.

References

  1. Sterzik, Michael F.; Morfill, Gregor E. (1994). "Evolution of Protoplanetary Disks with Condensation and Coagulation". Icarus. 111 (2): 536–546. Bibcode:1994Icar..111..536S. doi:10.1006/icar.1994.1162. ISSN   0019-1035.
  2. Tsytovich, Vadim N.; Morfill, Gregory E.; Vladimirov, Sergey V.; Thomas, Hubertus M. (2008), "Elementary Processes in Complex Plasmas", Elementary Physics of Complex Plasmas, Lecture Notes in Physics, Springer Berlin Heidelberg, vol. 731, pp. 67–140, Bibcode:2008LNP...731...67T, doi:10.1007/978-3-540-29003-2_3, ISBN   978-3-642-06703-7
  3. Nunomura, S.; Samsonov, D.; Zhdanov, S.; Morfill, G. (2005). "Heat Transfer in a Two-Dimensional Crystalline Complex (Dusty) Plasma". Physical Review Letters. 95 (2): 025003. Bibcode:2005PhRvL..95b5003N. doi:10.1103/physrevlett.95.025003. ISSN   0031-9007. PMID   16090692.
  4. Annika. "Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Gregor Morfill – Geschäftsführer • terraplasma GmbH". terraplasma GmbH (in German). Retrieved 8 March 2020.
  5. Morfill, Gregor E.; Rubin-Zuzic, Milenko; Rothermel, Hermann; Ivlev, Alexei V.; Klumov, Boris A.; Thomas, Hubertus M.; Konopka, Uwe; Steinberg, Victor (2004). "Highly Resolved Fluid Flows: "Liquid Plasmas" at the Kinetic Level". Physical Review Letters. 92 (17): 175004. Bibcode:2004PhRvL..92q5004M. doi:10.1103/physrevlett.92.175004. ISSN   0031-9007. PMID   15169161.
  6. Ivlev, A. V.; Morfill, G. E.; Konopka, U. (2002). "Coagulation of Charged Microparticles in Neutral Gas and Charge-Induced Gel Transitions". Physical Review Letters. 89 (19): 195502. Bibcode:2002PhRvL..89s5502I. doi:10.1103/physrevlett.89.195502. ISSN   0031-9007. PMID   12443122.
  7. Morfill, Gregor E. (1991). Chaos ist überall ... und es funktioniert : eine neue Weltsicht. Scheingraber, Herbert. Frankfurt/Main: Ullstein. ISBN   3-550-06509-4. OCLC   75225038.
  8. Thomas, H.; Morfill, G. E.; Demmel, V.; Goree, J.; Feuerbacher, B.; Möhlmann, D. (1994). "Plasma Crystal: Coulomb Crystallization in a Dusty Plasma". Physical Review Letters. 73 (5): 652–655. Bibcode:1994PhRvL..73..652T. doi:10.1103/physrevlett.73.652. ISSN   0031-9007. PMID   10057503.
  9. Rubin-Zuzic, M.; Morfill, G. E.; Ivlev, A. V.; Pompl, R.; Klumov, B. A.; Bunk, W.; Thomas, H. M.; Rothermel, H.; Havnes, O.; Fouquét, A. (2006). "Kinetic development of crystallization fronts in complex plasmas". Nature Physics. 2 (3): 181–185. Bibcode:2006NatPh...2..181R. doi: 10.1038/nphys242 . ISSN   1745-2473.
  10. Nefedov, Anatoli P.; Morfill, Gregor E.; Fortov, Vladimir E.; Thomas, Hubertus M.; Rothermel, Hermann; Hagl, Tanja; Ivlev, Alexei V.; Zuzic, Milenko; Klumov, Boris A.; Lipaev, Andrey M.; Molotkov, Vladimir I. (2003). "PKE-Nefedov\ast: plasma crystal experiments on the International Space Station". New Journal of Physics. 5: 33. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.80.6775 . doi: 10.1088/1367-2630/5/1/333 . ISSN   1367-2630.
  11. Ermolaeva, Svetlana A.; Varfolomeev, Alexander F.; Chernukha, Marina Yu.; Yurov, Dmitry S.; Vasiliev, Mikhail M.; Kaminskaya, Anastasya A.; Moisenovich, Mikhail M.; Romanova, Julia M.; Murashev, Arcady N.; Selezneva, Irina I.; Shimizu, Tetsuji (2011). "Bactericidal effects of non-thermal argon plasma in vitro, in biofilms and in the animal model of infected wounds". Journal of Medical Microbiology. 60 (1): 75–83. doi: 10.1099/jmm.0.020263-0 . ISSN   0022-2615. PMID   20829396.
  12. Shimizu, Tetsuji; Steffes, Bernd; Pompl, René; Jamitzky, Ferdinand; Bunk, Wolfram; Ramrath, Katrin; Georgi, Matthias; Stolz, Wilhelm; Schmidt, Hans-Ulrich; Urayama, Takuya; Fujii, Shuitsu (2008). "Characterization of Microwave Plasma Torch for Decontamination". Plasma Processes and Polymers. 5 (6): 577–582. doi:10.1002/ppap.200800021. ISSN   1612-8869.
  13. "Pulsare und Herzflimmern". 13 October 2007. Archived from the original on 13 October 2007. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
  14. "Ehrung für einen Physiker". www.uni-protokolle.de. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
  15. "DLR – Raumfahrtmanagement – Deutscher Wissenschaftler erhält höchste Auszeichnung der russischen Raumfahrt-Agentur". www.dlr.de. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
  16. 1 2 3 4 "2011 James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics Recipient". American Physical Society. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
  17. "James-Maxwell-Preis für Gregor Morfill". www.mpe.mpg.de (in German). Retrieved 8 March 2020.