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Earl Ward Plummer (October 30, 1940 – July 23, 2020) was an American
physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...
. His main contributions were in surface physics of metals. Plummer was a Professor of Physics at
Louisiana State University Louisiana State University (officially Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, commonly referred to as LSU) is a public land-grant research university in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The university was founded in 1860 nea ...
and 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 ...
prior to that.


Biography

Plummer received a Bachelor of Arts degree from
Lewis & Clark College Lewis & Clark College is a private liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon. Originally chartered in 1867 as the Albany Collegiate Institute in Albany, Oregon, the college was relocated to Portland in 1938 and in 1942 adopted the name Lewis & C ...
in 1962 and completed his Ph.D. degree in physics at
Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...
in 1967, working with Prof. Thor Rhodin. His thesis work was on atomic binding of 5-d transition-metal atoms using
Field ion microscope The Field ion microscope (FIM) was invented by Müller in 1951. It is a type of microscope that can be used to image the arrangement of atoms at the surface of a sharp metal tip. On October 11, 1955, Erwin Müller and his Ph.D. student, Kanwar ...
(FIM). Plummer accepted a
National Research Council National Research Council may refer to: * National Research Council (Canada), sponsoring research and development * National Research Council (Italy), scientific and technological research, Rome * National Research Council (United States), part of ...
Postdoctoral Fellowship at the National Bureau of Standards (now called The
National Institute of Standards and Technology The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical s ...
(NIST)) in the fall of 1967 working with Russ Young, and he stayed as a staff scientist until the fall of 1973. His work included field electron emission and
photoemission The photoelectric effect is the emission of electrons when electromagnetic radiation, such as light, hits a material. Electrons emitted in this manner are called photoelectrons. The phenomenon is studied in condensed matter physics, and solid sta ...
studies of surfaces. NIST selected his 1969 paper "Resonance Tunneling of Field-Emitted Electrons Through Adsorbates on Metal Surfaces", co-authored with J. W. Gadzuk and R. D. Young, for inclusion in the agency's centennial collection of its top 100 articles of the 20th century. This paper reported the first-ever single
electron spectroscopy Electron spectroscopy refers to a group formed by techniques based on the analysis of the energies of emitted electrons such as photoelectrons and Auger electrons. This group includes X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), which also known as Ele ...
work in which electronic energy levels of
atom Every atom is composed of a nucleus and one or more electrons bound to the nucleus. The nucleus is made of one or more protons and a number of neutrons. Only the most common variety of hydrogen has no neutrons. Every solid, liquid, gas, ...
s at the surface of a metal were observed. In 1973, Plummer accepted a position in the Physics Department at 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 ...
where his work mainly focused on angle-resolved photoemission, momentum-resolved inelastic electron scattering and nonlinear optical response from surfaces. In 1988, he was appointed the William Smith Professor of Physics and in 1990 became the director of the NSF-funded Materials Research Laboratory (Laboratory for Research on Structure of Matter). In January 1993, Plummer moved to a joint position at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and
Oak Ridge National Laboratory Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is a U.S. multiprogram science and technology national laboratory sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and administered, managed, and operated by UT–Battelle as a federally funded research an ...
. His research interests shifted to the study on an atomic scale of phase transitions in reduced dimensionality and surfaces of highly correlated electron systems such as transition-metal oxides. His primary research tool was variable-temperature
scanning tunneling microscopy A scanning tunneling microscope (STM) is a type of microscope used for imaging surfaces at the atomic level. Its development in 1981 earned its inventors, Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer, then at IBM Zürich, the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986. ...
. In 2000, Plummer became the Director of the Tennessee Advanced Materials Laboratory, a state-funded Center of Excellence. Plummer served on many national and international committees both to review existing scientific programs and to identify future directions for science and technology. Recent examples include: Chair of DOE-sponsored Workshop on "Soft X-Ray Science in the Next Millennium: The Future of Photon-In/Photon-Out Experiments, Pikeville, Tennessee, March 15–18, 2000, and Chair of DOE-BESAC (Basic Energy Sciences Advisory Committee) subpanel for the evaluation of the Intense Pulsed Neutron Source (IPNS) at Argonne National Laboratory and the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE) Manuel Lujan Jr. Neutron Scattering Center. He also was a member of the DOE-Basic Energy Sciences Advisory Committee, 2001–2004. He was the author of more than 400 refereed papers and included in the list of the 1,000 Most Cited Physicists, a list compiled by the
Institute for Scientific Information The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) was an academic publishing service, founded by Eugene Garfield in Philadelphia in 1956. ISI offered scientometric and bibliographic database services. Its specialty was citation indexing and analysi ...
which is based on papers published between 1981 and 1997. But what Plummer was proudest of in his long and distinguished career was the mentoring of promising young scientists. This included advising or co-advising Ph.D. theses of 40 graduate students, hosting ~25 postdoctoral fellows, and assisting many young scientists in advancing their careers. He died in Baton Rouge on July 23, 2020.


Awards and honors

*1968 Wayne B. Nottingham Prize *1983 Davisson-Germer Prize in Atomic or Surface Physics from the American Physical Society for "---the innovative application of electron spectroscopies." *1986 Guggenheim Fellowship *2001 Medard W. Welch Award by the
American Vacuum Society AVS: Science and Technology of Materials, Interfaces, and ProcessingAIP: A Federation of the Physical Sciences
. The citation reads, "For the development of novel instrumentation, its use to illuminate new concepts in the surface physics of metals, and the mentoring of promising young scientists." *2006 - Elected to National Academy of Sciences *2014 - Elected to
American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...
*2017 - International Science and Technology Cooperation Award of the
People's Republic of China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
*2017 - LSU Boyd Professor


Academic genealogy

Ward Plummer was a student of Thor Rhodin... *Thor Rhodin was a student of Hugh Scott Taylor. **Taylor was a student of Frederick George Donnan and Henry Bassett ef.1 ***Donnan was trained by Friedrich Wilhelm Ostwald. ****Ostwald's adviser was Carl Schmidt. *****who was a student of Justus von Liebig. ***Bassett was trained by
Adolf von Baeyer Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Adolf von Baeyer (; 31 October 1835 – 20 August 1917) was a German chemist who synthesised indigo and developed a nomenclature for cyclic compounds (that was subsequently extended and adopted as part of the IUPAC org ...
and Victor Villiger. ****Baeyer was a student of
Robert Bunsen Robert Wilhelm Eberhard Bunsen (; 30 March 1811 – 16 August 1899) was a German chemist. He investigated emission spectra of heated elements, and discovered caesium (in 1860) and rubidium (in 1861) with the physicist Gustav Kirchhoff. The Bu ...
and
Friedrich August Kekulé Friedrich may refer to: Names * Friedrich (surname), people with the surname ''Friedrich'' * Friedrich (given name), people with the given name ''Friedrich'' Other * Friedrich (board game), a board game about Frederick the Great and the Seven Year ...
. *****Bunsen was a student of Friedrich Stromeyer. *****Kekulé was a student of Heinrich Will.


Selected publications

* * * *Allyn, C. L., Gustafsson, T., Plummer E. W., Orientation of Co adsorbed on Ni(100), Chemical Physics Letters, 47 (1): 127-132, 1977 * * * * * *


External links


Department of Physics at LSULinkedIn Ward Plummer Physics ClubPeter D. Johnson, Wilson Ho, Eugene J. Mele, Mike Klein and Johanna Plummer, "E. Ward Plummer", Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences (2022)


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Plummer, Ward 21st-century American physicists 1940 births 2020 deaths Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences University of Tennessee faculty Louisiana State University faculty Cornell University alumni Lewis & Clark College alumni Oak Ridge National Laboratory people Fellows of the American Physical Society