Michael John Creutz (born November 24, 1944) is an American theoretical physicist at

Brookhaven National Laboratory Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory located in Upton, Long Island, and was formally established in 1947 at the site of Camp Upton, a former U.S. Army base and Japanese internment c ...

specializing in

lattice gauge theory In physics, lattice gauge theory is the study of gauge theories on a spacetime that has been discretized into a lattice. Gauge theories are important in particle physics, and include the prevailing theories of elementary particles: quantum elec ...

and

computational physics Computational physics is the study and implementation of numerical analysis to solve problems in physics for which a quantitative theory already exists. Historically, computational physics was the first application of modern computers in science, ...

Background

Creutz was born in 1944 in

Los Alamos, New Mexico Los Alamos is an census-designated place in Los Alamos County, New Mexico, United States, that is recognized as the development and creation place of the atomic bomb—the primary objective of the Manhattan Project by Los Alamos National Labora ...

. His father,

Edward Creutz Edward Creutz (January 23, 1913 – June 27, 2009) was an American physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project at the Metallurgical Laboratory and the Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II. After the war he became a professor of p ...

, was also a physicist and was working on the Manhattan Project to help build the atomic bomb at the time of Michael's birth. Creutz graduated with honor with a bachelor's degree in physics from

Caltech The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...

in 1966. He did his graduate work 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 ...

under a NSF Graduate Fellowship, graduating in 1970. His thesis was done at the

Stanford Linear Accelerator Center SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, originally named the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, is a United States Department of Energy National Laboratory operated by Stanford University under the programmatic direction of the U.S. Departme ...

and his adviser was the noted physicist

Sidney Drell Sidney David Drell (September 13, 1926 – December 21, 2016) was an American theoretical physicist and arms control expert. At the time of his death, he was professor emeritus at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) and senior fel ...

. After his graduation he served shortly as a research associate at SLAC before moving to the Center for Theoretical Physics at the

University of Maryland, College Park The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of Mary ...

, where he was a fellow from 1970-1972. In 1972 he joined the High Energy Theory Group at Brookhaven National Laboratory, becoming a Senior Physicist in 1985 and serving as Group leader from 1984 to 1987. In 2003 he became an adjunct professor at the

C. N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics __NOTOC__ The C. N. Yang Institute of Theoretical Physics (YITP) is a research center at Stony Brook University. In 1965, it was the vision of then University President J.S. Toll and Physics Department chair T.A. Pond to create an institute for the ...

at nearby

Stony Brook University Stony Brook University (SBU), officially the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is a public research university in Stony Brook, New York. Along with the University at Buffalo, it is one of the State University of New York system's ...

Research

Creutz's research spans a wide variety of topics in particle physics and mathematical physics, but he is best known for his work on

lattice QCD Lattice QCD is a well-established non-perturbative approach to solving the quantum chromodynamics (QCD) theory of quarks and gluons. It is a lattice gauge theory formulated on a grid or lattice of points in space and time. When the size of the ...

. His 1983 textbook ''Quarks, Gluons, and Lattices'' was the first full-length textbook on lattice QCD and is considered a classic in the field. Creutz 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 was the 2000 recipient of the

Aneesur Rahman Prize for Computational Physics The Aneesur Rahman Prize for Computational Physics is a prize that has been awarded annually by the American Physical Society since 1993. The recipient is chosen for "''outstanding achievement in computational physics research''". The prize is nam ...

"for first demonstrating that properties of QCD could be computed numerically on the lattice through Monte Carlo methods, and for numerous contributions to the field thereafter." In 2009 he received a

Humboldt Research Award The Humboldt Prize, the Humboldt-Forschungspreis in German, also known as the Humboldt Research Award, is an award given by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany to internationally renowned scientists and scholars who work outside of G ...

Books

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References

External links

latticeguy.net
- personal website
Creutz's BNL websitePapers on INSPIRE-HEParXiv.org preprints
{{DEFAULTSORT:Creutz, Michael Living people 1944 births 21st-century American physicists Particle physicists California Institute of Technology alumni Stanford University alumni Stony Brook University faculty Brookhaven National Laboratory staff Theoretical physicists Computational physicists Fellows of the American Physical Society Humboldt Research Award recipients People from Los Alamos, New Mexico