Wick Haxton | |
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Wick C. Haxton (born August 21, 1949, in Santa Cruz, California) is an American theoretical nuclear physicist and astrophysicist. [1] He is a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley and senior faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. [2] He was appointed a co-editor of the journal Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Science as of 2023. [3] In 2024, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society. [4]
Haxton grew up in Santa Cruz, [5] studied from 1967 at the University of California, Santa Cruz (BA in physics and mathematics 1971) and received his doctorate in 1976 at Stanford University for his work on Semileptonic Weak Interactions in Complex Nuclei (1975). [6] [2]
From 1975 to 1977 he worked at the Institute for Nuclear Physics of the University of Mainz and then until 1985 as Oppenheimer Fellow in the theoretical division of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. After a year as assistant professor at Purdue University in 1984 he became associate professor and in 1987 professor at the University of Washington. He remained there as professor of physics and astronomy until 2009, serving from 1991 to 2006 as director of the National Institute for Nuclear Theory (INT). In 2009 he left the University of Washington to become professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley and senior faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. [2] [7] [8]
Haxton is engaged in nuclear astrophysics (supernovae, the solar neutrino problem, nucleosynthesis), neutrino physics (neutrino oscillations, neutrinoless double beta decay, neutrino properties), many-body theory (effective theories) in nuclear physics (as well as in atomic physics and condensed matter physics), and tests of symmetries of fundamental interactions (parity, CP-symmetry, lepton number). [1] [9] Haxton and his colleagues put forward a method for the formulation of an effective field theory for shell model using the harmonic oscillator basis as a regulator. [10] [11] He led the early efforts to convert the Homestake Mine in South Dakota to scientific use as the Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory, but left the project after the mine was flooded in 2003. [12] [13] [14]
Haxton has been a consultant for Los Alamos National Laboratory, [2] Argonne National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, TRIUMF, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and various other laboratories and university facilities over the past two decades. [15]
He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (1987), [16] and in the 1990s served as chair of the Division of Nuclear Physics and the Division of Astrophysics. [2] He is a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences (1999), [1] and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, [17] the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1988), [2] and the Washington State Academy of Sciences. [18]
He was a Guggenheim Fellow (2000–2001), [19] Visiting Miller Professor at Berkeley (2001), [20] Bethe Lecturer at Cornell University (2001) [7] and received the 2004 Hans Bethe Prize of the American Physical Society for his contributions and scientific leadership in neutrino astrophysics and especially for the connection of nuclear physics theory with experiments and observations in nuclear astrophysics and astrophysics (eulogy). [9]
He is a member of the American Philosophical Society (2024). [21]
Frederick Reines was an American physicist. He was awarded the 1995 Nobel Prize in Physics for his co-detection of the neutrino with Clyde Cowan in the neutrino experiment. He may be the only scientist in history "so intimately associated with the discovery of an elementary particle and the subsequent thorough investigation of its fundamental properties."
Hans Albrecht Bethe was a German-American theoretical physicist who made major contributions to nuclear physics, astrophysics, quantum electrodynamics, and solid-state physics, and who won the 1967 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis. For most of his career, Bethe was a professor at Cornell University.
The Cowan–Reines neutrino experiment was conducted by physicists Clyde Cowan and Frederick Reines in 1956. The experiment confirmed the existence of neutrinos. Neutrinos, subatomic particles with no electric charge and very small mass, had been conjectured to be an essential particle in beta decay processes in the 1930s. With neither mass nor charge, such particles appeared to be impossible to detect. The experiment exploited a huge flux of electron antineutrinos emanating from a nearby nuclear reactor and a detector consisting of large tanks of water. Neutrino interactions with the protons of the water were observed, verifying the existence and basic properties of this particle for the first time.
John Norris Bahcall was an American astrophysicist and the Richard Black Professor for Astrophysics at the Institute for Advanced Study. He was known for a wide range of contributions to solar, galactic and extragalactic astrophysics, including the solar neutrino problem, the development of the Hubble Space Telescope and for his leadership and development of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
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Maurice Goldhaber was an American physicist, who in 1957 established that neutrinos have negative helicity.
Gian Carlo Wick was an Italian theoretical physicist who made important contributions to quantum field theory. The Wick rotation, Wick contraction, Wick's theorem, and the Wick product are named after him.
Nuclear astrophysics is an interdisciplinary part of both nuclear physics and astrophysics, involving close collaboration among researchers in various subfields of each of these fields. This includes, notably, nuclear reactions and their rates as they occur in cosmic environments, and modeling of astrophysical objects where these nuclear reactions may occur, but also considerations of cosmic evolution of isotopic and elemental composition (often called chemical evolution). Constraints from observations involve multiple messengers, all across the electromagnetic spectrum (nuclear gamma-rays, X-rays, optical, and radio/sub-mm astronomy), as well as isotopic measurements of solar-system materials such as meteorites and their stardust inclusions, cosmic rays, material deposits on Earth and Moon). Nuclear physics experiments address stability (i.e., lifetimes and masses) for atomic nuclei well beyond the regime of stable nuclides into the realm of radioactive/unstable nuclei, almost to the limits of bound nuclei (the drip lines), and under high density (up to neutron star matter) and high temperature (plasma temperatures up to 109 K). Theories and simulations are essential parts herein, as cosmic nuclear reaction environments cannot be realized, but at best partially approximated by experiments. In general terms, nuclear astrophysics aims to understand the origin of the chemical elements and isotopes, and the role of nuclear energy generation, in cosmic sources such as stars, supernovae, novae, and violent binary-star interactions.
Alastair G. W. Cameron was an American–Canadian astrophysicist and space scientist who was an eminent staff member of the Astronomy department of Harvard University. He was one of the founders of the field of nuclear astrophysics, advanced the theory that the Moon was created by the giant impact of a Mars-sized object with the early Earth, and was an early adopter of computer technology in astrophysics.
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Arthur Bruce McDonald, P.Eng is a Canadian astrophysicist. McDonald is the director of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory Collaboration and held the Gordon and Patricia Gray Chair in Particle Astrophysics at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario from 2006 to 2013. He was awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics jointly with Japanese physicist Takaaki Kajita.
Gordon Alan Baym is an American theoretical physicist.
The Hans A. Bethe Prize, is presented annually by the American Physical Society. The prize honors outstanding work in theory, experiment or observation in the areas of astrophysics, nuclear physics, nuclear astrophysics, or closely related fields. The prize consists of $10,000 and a certificate citing the contributions made by the recipient.
Gerald Edward Brown was an American theoretical physicist who worked on nuclear physics and astrophysics. Since 1968 he had been a professor at the Stony Brook University. He was a distinguished professor emeritus of the C. N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics at Stony Brook University.
Herbert Hwa-sen Chen was a Chinese-born American theoretical and experimental physicist at the University of California at Irvine known for his contributions in the field of neutrino detection. Chen's work on observations of elastic neutrino-electron scattering provided important experimental support for the electroweak theory of the standard model of particle physics. In 1984 Chen realized that the deuterium of heavy water could be used as a detector that would distinguish the flavors of solar neutrinos. This idea led Chen to develop plans for the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory that would eventually make fundamental measurements demonstrating that neutrinos were particles with mass.
Robert Graham Hamish Robertson is a Canadian–American experimental physicist, specializing in neutrino physics. He is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington, where he was formerly the director of the University of Washington's Center for Experimental Nuclear Physics and Astrophysics.
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James "Jim" Ricker Wilson was an American theoretical physicist, known for his pioneering research in numerical relativity and numerical relativistic hydrodynamics.
George Michael Fuller is an American theoretical physicist, known for his research on nuclear astrophysics involving weak interactions, neutrino flavor-mixing, and quark matter, as well as the hypothetical nuclear matter.
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