Marshall Nicholas Rosenbluth (5 February 1927 – 28 September 2003) was an

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

plasma physicist Plasma ()πλάσμα
, Henry George Liddell, R ...

and member of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

, and member of the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...

. In 1997 he was awarded the

National Medal of Science The National Medal of Science is an honor bestowed by the President of the United States to individuals in science and engineering who have made important contributions to the advancement of knowledge in the fields of behavioral and social scienc ...

for discoveries in controlled thermonuclear fusion, contributions to

plasma physics Plasma ()πλάσμα
, Henry George Liddell, R ...

, and work in computational

statistical mechanics In physics, statistical mechanics is a mathematical framework that applies statistical methods and probability theory to large assemblies of microscopic entities. It does not assume or postulate any natural laws, but explains the macroscopic be ...

. He was also a recipient of the E.O. Lawrence Prize (1964), the

Albert Einstein Award The Albert Einstein Award (sometimes mistakenly called the ''Albert Einstein Medal'' because it was accompanied with a gold medal) was an award in theoretical physics, given periodically from 1951 to 1979, that was established to recognize high ac ...

(1967), the

James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics 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, ...

(1976), the

Enrico Fermi Award The Enrico Fermi Award is a scientific award conferred by the President of the United States. It is awarded to honor scientists of international stature for their lifetime achievement in the development, use, or production of energy. It was establ ...

(1985), and the

Hannes Alfvén Prize The Hannes Alfvén Prize is a prize established by the European Physical Society (EPS) Plasma Physics Division in 2000. The Prize is awarded annually by the European Physical Society at the EPS Conference on Plasma Physics for outstanding work in t ...

(2002).

Key scientific contributions

During his first post-doctoral position at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

(1949–1950), he derived the ''Rosenbluth formula'', which was the basis of the analysis used by

Robert Hofstadter Robert Hofstadter (February 5, 1915 – November 17, 1990) was an American physicist. He was the joint winner of the 1961 Nobel Prize in Physics (together with Rudolf Mössbauer) "for his pioneering studies of electron scattering in atomic nucle ...

in his Nobel prize-winning experimental investigation of

electron scattering Electron scattering occurs when electrons are deviated from their original trajectory. This is due to the electrostatic forces within matter interaction or, if an external magnetic field is present, the electron may be deflected by the Lorentz fo ...

. Hofstadter refers to this in his 1961

Nobel Lecture 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." Alfre ...

: "This behavior can be understood in terms of the theoretical scattering law developed by M. Rosenbluth in 1950". In 1953, Rosenbluth derived the

Metropolis algorithm A metropolis () is a large city or conurbation which is a significant economic, political, and cultural center for a country or region, and an important hub for regional or international connections, commerce, and communications. A big ci ...

, based on generating a

Markov chain A Markov chain or Markov process is a stochastic model describing a sequence of possible events in which the probability of each event depends only on the state attained in the previous event. Informally, this may be thought of as, "What happe ...

which sampled fluid configurations according to the

Boltzmann distribution In statistical mechanics and mathematics, a Boltzmann distribution (also called Gibbs distribution Translated by J.B. Sykes and M.J. Kearsley. See section 28) is a probability distribution or probability measure that gives the probability t ...

. This algorithm was first presented in the paper "

Equation of State Calculations by Fast Computing Machines "Equation of State Calculations by Fast Computing Machines" is a scholarly article published by Nicholas Metropolis, Arianna W. Rosenbluth, Marshall N. Rosenbluth, Augusta H. Teller, and Edward Teller in the Journal of Chemical Physics in 1953. Thi ...

", coauthored with his wife Arianna Rosenbluth (who wrote the first computer program to implement the method),

Nicholas Metropolis Nicholas Constantine Metropolis (Greek: ; June 11, 1915 – October 17, 1999) was a Greek-American physicist. Metropolis received his BSc (1937) and PhD in physics (1941, with Robert Mulliken) at the University of Chicago. Shortly afterwards, ...

Augusta H. Teller Augusta Maria "Mici" Teller (originally Schütz-Harkányi; 30 April 1909 – 4 June 2000) was a Hungarian-American scientist and computer programmer, involved in the development of the Metropolis algorithm. Life and career Teller was born as Au ...

and

Edward Teller Edward Teller ( hu, Teller Ede; January 15, 1908 – September 9, 2003) was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist who is known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb" (see the Teller–Ulam design), although he did not care fo ...

. This now-famous paper was cited in ''Computing in Science and Engineering'' as being among the top 10 algorithms having the "greatest influence on the development and practice of science and engineering in the 20th century." He and Arianna subsequently introduced the configurational-bias Monte Carlo method for simulating polymers. By the late 1950s, Rosenbluth turned his attention to the burgeoning discipline of plasma physics and quickly laid the foundation for many avenues of research in the field, particularly the theory of

plasma instabilities The stability of a plasma is an important consideration in the study of plasma physics. When a system containing a plasma is at equilibrium, it is possible for certain parts of the plasma to be disturbed by small perturbative forces acting on it ...

. Although he continued to work on plasma physics for the remainder of his career, he often made forays into other fields. For example, around 1980, he and coworkers produced a detailed analysis of the

free electron laser A free-electron laser (FEL) is a (fourth generation) light source producing extremely brilliant and short pulses of radiation. An FEL functions and behaves in many ways like a laser, but instead of using stimulated emission from atomic or molecula ...

, indicating how its spectral intensity can be optimized. He maintained a high productivity rate throughout his entire career. Indeed, only a few years before his death, Rosenbluth discovered the existence of residual flows (so-called ''Rosenbluth-Hinton flows''), a key result for understanding turbulence in

tokamak A tokamak (; russian: токамáк; otk, 𐱃𐰸𐰢𐰴, Toḳamaḳ) is a device which uses a powerful magnetic field to confine plasma in the shape of a torus. The tokamak is one of several types of magnetic confinement devices being d ...

Early years

Rosenbluth was born into a Jewish family and graduated from

Stuyvesant High School Stuyvesant High School (pronounced ), commonly referred to among its students as Stuy (pronounced ), is a State school, public university-preparatory school, college-preparatory, Specialized high schools in New York City, specialized high school ...

in 1942. He did his undergraduate study at Harvard, graduating in 1946 (B.S.,

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), despite also serving in the

U.S. Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage of ...

(1944–46) during this period. He received his Ph.D. in 1949 from the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

with

Enrico Fermi Enrico Fermi (; 29 September 1901 – 28 November 1954) was an Italian (later naturalized American) physicist and the creator of the world's first nuclear reactor, the Chicago Pile-1. He has been called the "architect of the nuclear age" and ...

. In 1950,

, considered the father of the

hydrogen bomb A thermonuclear weapon, fusion weapon or hydrogen bomb (H bomb) is a second-generation nuclear weapon design. Its greater sophistication affords it vastly greater destructive power than first-generation nuclear bombs, a more compact size, a lowe ...

, recruited Rosenbluth to work at Los Alamos. Rosenbluth maintained this position until 1956. The research he conducted at Los Alamos led to the development of the H-bomb.

Additional information

Upon his retirement, he took on the responsibility of chief scientist of the Central Team for the

International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor ITER (initially the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, ''iter'' meaning "the way" or "the path" in Latin) is an international nuclear fusion research and engineering megaproject aimed at creating energy by replicating, on Earth ...

(ITER) until 1999. Rosenbluth also served as a member of the

JASON Defense Advisory Group JASON is an independent group of elite scientists which advises the United States government on matters of science and technology, mostly of a sensitive nature. The group was created in the aftermath of the Sputnik launch as a way to reinvigorate ...

. Rosenbluth was affectionately known as the ''Pope of Plasma Physics'' in reference to his deep understanding of the field.Kim A. McDonald
Nuclear Fusion Pioneer At UC San Diego Dies At 76
, obituary 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, ...

website. Retrieved 2008-07-08.

Notes

References

* J.W. Van Dam (Ed), ''From Particles to Plasmas: Lectures Honoring Marshall N. Rosenbluth'',

Addison Wesley Addison-Wesley is an American publisher of textbooks and computer literature. It is an imprint of Pearson PLC, a global publishing and education company. In addition to publishing books, Addison-Wesley also distributes its technical titles through ...

(1989) .

External links

1994 Audio Interview with Marshall Rosenbluth by Richard Rhodes
Voices of the Manhattan Project

MSS 670
Special Collections & Archives
UC San Diego Library.

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rosenbluth, Marshall 1927 births 2003 deaths American nuclear physicists Enrico Fermi Award recipients Harvard University alumni Institute for Advanced Study faculty Jewish American physicists American people of German-Jewish descent Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Monte Carlo methodologists National Medal of Science laureates Princeton University faculty University of Chicago alumni Stanford University faculty Stuyvesant High School alumni University of California, San Diego faculty Members of JASON (advisory group) American plasma physicists Scientists from New York (state) Fellows of the American Physical Society 20th-century American Jews 21st-century American Jews Members of the American Philosophical Society