Nathaniel Joseph Fisch is an American plasma physicist known for pioneering the excitation of

electric current An electric current is a stream of charged particles, such as electrons or ions, moving through an electrical conductor or space. It is measured as the net rate of flow of electric charge through a surface or into a control volume. The moving pa ...

s in plasmas using electromagnetic waves, which was then used in tokamak experiments. This contributed to an increased understanding of

plasma wave In plasma physics, waves in plasmas are an interconnected set of particles and fields which propagate in a periodically repeating fashion. A plasma is a quasineutral, electrically conductive fluid. In the simplest case, it is composed of electron ...

–particle interactions in the field for which he was awarded the James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics in 2005 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 ...

in 2015. Fisch's research also involve

inertial fusion Inertial confinement fusion (ICF) is a fusion energy process that initiates nuclear fusion reactions by compressing and heating targets filled with thermonuclear fuel. In modern machines, the targets are small spherical pellets about the size o ...

, as well as methods to generate intensive laser fields to accelerate particles, such as the ones used in plasma thrusters. He is also known to have worked on the hydrodynamics of charged liquids, petroleum refinement, and pattern recognition.

Early life and career

Fisch studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (as MIT National Scholar 1968 to 1972), where he received his bachelor's and master's degree in 1972 and 1975 respectively, and received his doctorate in

computer science and electrical engineering Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) is an academic program at many universities which comprises scientific and engineering aspects of computing. CSE is also a term often used in Europe to translate the name of engineering informatics academic p ...

in 1978. From 1978, he was a scientist in the plasma physics laboratory at Princeton University, where he has been a professor in the Faculty of Astrophysics since 1991 (also associated with the Faculty of Mechanics and Flight Engineering since 2000) and heads the University's Plasma Physics Program. In 1986, he was a visiting scientist at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center. From 1981 to 1986, he was a consultant at Exxon Research.

Honors and awards

Fisch was awarded the

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

in 1985. He was then elected 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 ...

in 1987, and was subsequently awarded the

John Dawson Award for Excellence in Plasma Physics Research The American Physical Society gives out a number of awards for research excellence and conduct; topics include outstanding leadership, computational physics, lasers, mathematics, and more. ;David Adler Lectureship Award in the Field of Materials ...

in 1992 for fundamental theoretical work on non-inductive power generation in toroidally enclosed plasmas. In 2004, he received 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 2005, he received the James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics for ''"theoretical development of efficient radio frequency (RF)-driven current in plasmas and for greatly expanding our ability to understand, to analyze, and to utilize wave–plasma interactions.''" In 2015, he was awarded the

from the European Physical Society for ''"his contributions to the understanding of plasma wave–particle interactions and their applications to efficiently driving currents with radio-frequency waves."''

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fisch, Nathaniel Joseph American plasma physicists Fellows of the American Physical Society 1950 births Living people MIT School of Engineering alumni Plasma physicists