William L. Kruer

Last updated
William L. Kruer
Born (1942-04-20) April 20, 1942 (age 80)
NationalityAmerican
Education University of Louisville (B.S., M.S.)
Princeton University (Ph.D.)
Awards
Scientific career
Fields Plasma physics

William L. Kruer (born 20 April 1942, Louisville, Kentucky) is an American physicist, specializing in plasma physics. [1]

Kruer studied at the University of Louisville (Master's degree, 1965) and received his PhD in 1969 from Princeton University. Afterwards he was a research associate scientist at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and from 1970 a full member of the research staff. Starting in 1972, he was a group leader for theoretical plasma physics and simulation at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and from 1993 a chief scientist in plasma physics there. He wrote an important book on laser plasma interactions. [2]

In 1990, he received the James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics. [3]

Related Research Articles

Harold Paul Furth was an Austrian-American physicist who was a pioneer in leading the American efforts to harness thermonuclear fusion for the generation of electricity. He died of a heart ailment on 21 February 2002.

The James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics is an annual American Physical Society (APS) award that is given in recognition of outstanding contributions to the field of the Plasma Physics. It was established in 1975 by Maxwell Technologies, Inc, in honor of the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell. It is currently sponsored by General Atomics. The prize includes a $10,000 USD monetary award and recognition at the annual American Physical Society Division of Plasma Physics conference.

Charles F. Kennel is an American plasma physicist and former Associate Administrator of NASA. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and won the James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics in 1997. In 2009, he was advertised by NASA Watch as a potential pick by Barack Obama as the next NASA Administrator.

John Myrick Dawson was an American computational physicist and the father of plasma-based acceleration techniques. Dawson earned his degrees in physics from the University of Maryland, College Park: a B.S. in 1952 and Ph.D. in 1957. His thesis "Distortion of Atoms and Molecules in Dense Media" was prepared under the guidance of Zaka Slawsky.

Ronald Crosby Davidson was a Canadian physicist, professor, and scientific administrator who worked in the United States. He served as the first director of the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center from 1978 to 1988, and as director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory from 1991 to 1996. He had been Professor of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University since 1991.

John Morgan Greene was an American theoretical physicist and applied mathematician, known for his work on solitons and plasma physics.

Bruno Coppi is an Italian-American physicist specializing in plasma physics.

Ira Borah Bernstein is an American theoretical physicist specializing in plasma physics. He was the first person to formulate the theory of electrostatic waves propagating in a magnetized plasma in 1958, which are now commonly known as Bernstein waves in plasma physics.

Chandrashekhar "Chan" Janardan Joshi is an Indian-American experimental plasma physicist. He is known for his pioneering work in plasma-based particle acceleration techniques for which he won the 2006 James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics.

Miklos Porkolab (born March 24, 1939) is a Hungarian-American physicist specializing in plasma physics.

Russell M. Kulsrud is an American physicist who specializes in plasma physics and astrophysics.

James F. Drake is an American theoretical physicist who specializes in plasma physics. He is known for his studies on plasma instabilities and magnetic reconnection for which he was awarded the 2010 James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics by the American Physical Society.

Nathaniel Joseph Fisch is an American plasma physicist known for pioneering the excitation of electric currents in plasmas using electromagnetic waves, which was then used in tokamak experiments. This contributed to an increased understanding of plasma wave–particle interactions in the field for which he was awarded the James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics in 2005 and the Hannes Alfvén Prize in 2015.

Ravindra Nath Sudan was an Indian-American electrical engineer and physicist who specialized in plasma physics. He was known for independently discovering the whistler instability in 1963, an instability which causes audible low-frequency radio waves to be emitted in the magnetosphere in the form of whistler waves. He also pioneered the study of the generation and propagation of intense ion beams, and contributed to theories of plasma instabilities and plasma turbulence.

Phillip A. Sprangle is an American physicist who specializes in the applications of plasma physics. He is known for his work involving the propagation of high-intensity laser beams in the atmosphere, the interaction of ultra-short laser pulses from high-power lasers with matter, nonlinear optics and nonlinear plasma physics, free electron lasers, and lasers in particle acceleration.

Valery A. Godyak is a Russian-American physicist who specializes in plasma physics. As a scientist, he made fundamental contributions to the understanding of radio frequency (RF) induced discharges in plasmas as well as in associated nonlinear phenomena. As an industrial physicist, he developed induction lamps such as the Icetron-Endura RF lamp and received honors from companies such as Osram Sylvania and Siemens.

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.

Masaaki Yamada is a Japanese plasma physicist known for his studies on magnetic reconnection.

Clifford Michael Surko is an American physicist, whose works involve plasma physics, atomic physics, nonlinear dynamics and solid state physics. Together with his colleagues, he developed techniques for laser scattering at small angles to study waves and turbulence in tokamak plasmas and invented a positron trap that was used in experiments worldwide to study antimatter. Surko also developed other techniques for studying positron plasmas and examined atomic and plasma physics with positrons.

Warren Bicknell Mori is an American computational plasma physicist and a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He was awarded the 2020 James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics for his contributions to the theory and computer simulations of non-linear processes in plasma-based acceleration using kinetic theory, as well as for his research in relativistically intense lasers and beam-plasma interactions.

References

  1. "Kruer, William L." history.aip.org. Retrieved 2020-02-17.
  2. Kruer, William L. (2001). The Physics of Laser Plasma Interactions. Westview Press. ISBN   9780813340838.
  3. "1990 James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics Recipient". American Physical Society. Retrieved 2020-02-17.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)