Bogdan Castle Maglich (also spelled Maglic or Maglić) (August 5, 1928, Sombor, Yugoslavia – November 25, 2017,

Newport Beach, California Newport Beach is a coastal city in South Orange County, California. Newport Beach is known for swimming and sandy beaches. Newport Harbor once supported maritime industries however today, it is used mostly for recreation. Balboa Island, Newport ...

, US) was a Serbian experimental

nuclear physicist Nuclear physics is the field of physics that studies atomic nuclei and their constituents and interactions, in addition to the study of other forms of nuclear matter. Nuclear physics should not be confused with atomic physics, which studies the ...

and the leading advocate of a purported non-radioactive

aneutronic fusion Aneutronic fusion is any form of fusion power in which very little of the energy released is carried by neutrons. While the lowest-threshold nuclear fusion reactions release up to 80% of their energy in the form of neutrons, aneutronic reactions ...

energy source. Maglich built four models of ''

Migma Migma, sometimes migmatron or migmacell, was a proposed colliding beam fusion reactor designed by Bogdan Maglich in 1969. Migma uses self-intersecting beams of ions from small particle accelerators to force the ions to fuse. Similar systems using l ...

'', devices producing fusion of deuterium atoms in colliding ion beams.

Education and academic work

Maglich received his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Belgrade in 1951, his Master of Science from the

University of Liverpool , mottoeng = These days of peace foster learning , established = 1881 – University College Liverpool1884 – affiliated to the federal Victoria Universityhttp://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukla/2004/4 University of Manchester Act 200 ...

in 1955, and his Ph.D. in high-energy physics and nuclear engineering from the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

in 1959. Upon receiving his Ph.D., Maglich joined Dr.

Luis Walter Alvarez Luis Walter Alvarez (June 13, 1911 – September 1, 1988) was an American experimental physicist, inventor, and professor who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1968 for his discovery of resonance states in particle physics using the h ...

's research group at Lawrence Berkeley Lab. During this time, he, along with Fred Kirsten, invented the "sonic spark chamber", the first film-less spark chamber particle detector system. Maglich participated in the discovery of the omega meson, as described in Alvarez's Nobel lecture: Between 1963 and 1967, he worked at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (

CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in a northwestern suburb of Gene ...

) in Geneva, Switzerland. While conducting research at CERN, he invented the "missing mass spectrometer". With this instrument, his team of French and Swiss physicists reported the discovery of seven mesons. In 1967, Maglich joined the faculty of the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

, as well as being visiting faculty at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

. In 1969, he became professor and principal investigator for high energy physics at

Rutgers University Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's ...

. In 1974, he left academia to pursue his research in the private sector.

Early work

Maglich first rose to prominence in his field working on a team at the

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, ...

's Lawrence Radiation Laboratory analyzing liquid hydrogen bubble chamber data from Berkeley's bevatron accelerator. The team, which also included

Luis W. Alvarez Luis Walter Alvarez (June 13, 1911 – September 1, 1988) was an American experimental physicist, inventor, and professor who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1968 for his discovery of resonance states in particle physics using the ...

Arthur H. Rosenfeld Arthur Hinton Rosenfeld (June 22, 1926 – January 27, 2017) was a UC Berkeley physicist and California energy commissioner, dubbed the "Godfather of Energy Efficiency", for developing new standards which helped improve energy efficiency in Cali ...

, and Lynn Stevenson, discovered the first solid experimental evidence for the existence of the ω meson resonance. (In 1968, Luis Alvarez was awarded a

Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...

for this and related work.) Maglich's contribution to this discovery led to him receiving a White House citation from President

John F. Kennedy John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination i ...

and being named an honorary citizen in Switzerland by the president of the Swiss Confederation. Toward the end of the 1960s, R. Macek and Maglich proposed "the principle of self colliding orbits" and the perceptron, a self-colliding particle beam accelerator originally proposed for studying pion-pion collisions. Shortly thereafter, in the early 1970s, the perceptron design formed the basis for Maglich's "migmatron" concept of a self-colliding ion beam fusion reactor.

Business ventures

In his attempts to raise funding for his magma research, Maglich has been associated with a string of business ventures. In 1974, he formed MIGMA Institute of High Energy Fusion, Fusion Energy Corp. From 1985 to 1987, he was CEO and principal investigator of Aneutronic Energy Labs of United Sciences, Inc. at Princeton, a research firm also known as AELabs. It was during this time that Maglich worked under a research grant from the United States Air Force to attempt to develop his migmatron concept into a compact power source for spacecraft with Bechtel Corp. From 1988 to 1993, he was CEO of Advanced Physics Corporation, chaired by

Glenn T. Seaborg Glenn Theodore Seaborg (; April 19, 1912February 25, 1999) was an American chemist whose involvement in the synthesis, discovery and investigation of ten transuranium elements earned him a share of the 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. His work in ...

. In 1995, Maglich founded HiEnergy Microdevices, which later became HiEnergy Technologies, Inc., a developer and manufacturer of neutron-based bomb detection equipment based on his invention of "atometery". He continued to occupy various positions with that company until being terminated for cause. Sixteen months after Maglich's departure, HiEnergy Technologies declared bankruptcy in 2007.HiEnergy Technologies, Inc. Announces Decision to Seek Bankruptcy Protection to Address Financial and Operational Challenges
/ref> After leaving HiEnergy Technologies, Maglich became the chief technology officer of California Science & Engineering Corporation (CALSEC).

Personal life

The son of a lawyer and elected member of the Yugoslav Royal Parliament, Maglich (at age 13) and his mother were imprisoned in a Croatian

Ustaše The Ustaše (), also known by anglicised versions Ustasha or Ustashe, was a Croats, Croatian Fascism, fascist and ultranationalism, ultranationalist organization active, as one organization, between 1929 and 1945, formally known as the Ustaš ...

(Nazi-affiliated) concentration camp for Serbs, but managed to escape. Maglich has five children: Angelica (born 1989) and Aleksandra Maglich (born 1991), from a prior marriage to UCLA media artist Victoria Vesna; also Marko (born 1960), Ivanka (born 1961) and Roberta (born 1972).

References

External links

"Science: Nature's Onion"
''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...

''. September 15, 1961.
"Company Interview: Bogdan Maglich: HiEnergy Technologies, Inc."
''

The Wall Street Transcript ''The Wall Street Transcript'' is a paid subscription publication and Web site that publishes bi-weekly industry reports that feature equity analyst, money manager and CEO interviews. Reports typically cover two to three industries and express ...

''. January 9, 2006.
"Visionary Physicist's Crusade Serves As Lesson In Futility"
'' The Scientist''. November 27, 1989. 3 (23): 1. *Maglich, Bogdan (January 20, 1990)
"Letter: Migma Omissions"
''The Scientist''. * {{DEFAULTSORT:Maglich, Bogdan 1928 births 2017 deaths American physicists Serbian physicists Yugoslav emigrants to the United States University of Belgrade Faculty of Physics alumni Yugoslav physicists People from Sombor People associated with CERN Yugoslav expatriates in the United Kingdom