John D. Lindl (born July 27, 1946 in

Toledo, Ohio Toledo ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Lucas County, Ohio, United States. A major Midwestern United States port city, Toledo is the fourth-most populous city in the state of Ohio, after Columbus, Cleveland, and Cincinnati, and according ...

) is 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 caus ...

who specializes in inertial confinement fusion (ICF). He is currently the chief scientist of the

National Ignition Facility The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is a laser-based inertial confinement fusion (ICF) research device, located at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, United States. NIF's mission is to achieve fusion ignition wit ...

at the

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is a federal research facility in Livermore, California, United States. The lab was originally established as the University of California Radiation Laboratory, Livermore Branch in 1952 in response ...

Early life and career

Lindl obtained a B.S in engineering physics from

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 teach an ...

in 1968 and a Ph.D. in astrophysics from

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 1972. His Ph.D. thesis advisor was

John M. Dawson John Myrick Dawson (30 September 1930 in Champaign, Illinois – 17 November 2001 in Los Angeles) was an American computational physicist and the father of plasma-based acceleration techniques. Dawson earned his degrees in physics from t ...

. In the same year, Lindl joined the

(LLNL), where he worked for John Nuckolls in the early days of inertial fusion research (e.g. optimal target design for lasers and particle beams, hydrodynamic instabilities, plasma development in the cavity and cavity design, implosion symmetry). In 1976, he was involved in the design of the first laser fusion experiments with the

Cyclops laser Cyclops was a high-power laser built at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in 1975. It was the second laser constructed in the lab's ''Laser'' program, which aimed to study inertial confinement fusion (ICF). The Cyclops was a singl ...

. In 1983, he was deputy program manager for theory and target design in the ICF program of the LLNL. In 1990, he became head of the Nova Laser program to demonstrate the use of a 1 to 2 megajoule laser for inertial fusion. After the ICF research at LLNL became declassified in 1993, Lindl wrote an overview article in Physics of Plasmas, which then led to his book on inertial fusion in 1997. Lindl became the chief scientist at the National Ignition Facility in 2005, whose construction began in 1997 and was inaugurated in 2009 (with the first large-scale laser target experiments). He has also recently been involved in magnetic fusion research at the LLNL's

Sustained Spheromak Physics Experiment The Sustained Spheromak Physics Experiment (SSPX) is a program at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the United States established to investigate spheromak plasma. A spheromak device produces a plasma in magnetohydrodynamic equilibrium ma ...

(SSPX).

Honors and awards

Lindl is a fellow of the

American Physical Society The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of k ...

and the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...

. He has received awards such as the American Nuclear Society's

Edward Teller Award The Edward Teller Award (or the Edward Teller Medal) is an award presented every two years by the American Nuclear Society for "''pioneering research and leadership in the use of laser and ion-particle beams to produce unique high-temperature and ...

in 1993, the

Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award The Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award was established in 1959 in honor of a scientist who helped elevate American physics to the status of world leader in the field. E. O. Lawrence was the inventor of the cyclotron, an accelerator of subatomic parti ...

in 1994, and the Fusion Power Associates Leaders Award in 2000. In 2007, Lindl received the James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics for "''30 years of continuous plasma physics contributions in

high energy density physics High-energy-density physics (HEDP) is a new subfield of physics intersecting condensed matter physics, nuclear physics, astrophysics and plasma physics. It has been defined as the physics of matter and radiation at energy densities in excess of abou ...

and inertial confinement fusion research and scientific management"''.

Books

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lindl, John D. 1946 births Living people American plasma physicists 20th-century American physicists Fellows of the American Physical Society Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Cornell University alumni Princeton University alumni 21st-century American physicists