Peter Vaughan Elsmere McClintock (born 17 October 1940, in

Omagh Omagh (; from ga, An Ómaigh , meaning 'the virgin plain') is the county town of County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. It is situated where the rivers River Drumragh, Drumragh and Camowen River, Camowen meet to form the River Strule, Strule. North ...

Northern Ireland Northern Ireland ( ga, Tuaisceart Éireann ; sco, label= Ulster-Scots, Norlin Airlann) is a part of the United Kingdom, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, that is variously described as a country, province or region. Nort ...

) is notable for his scientific work on superfluids and

stochastic Stochastic (, ) refers to the property of being well described by a random probability distribution. Although stochasticity and randomness are distinct in that the former refers to a modeling approach and the latter refers to phenomena themselv ...

nonlinear dynamics.IEEE Trans. Circ. & Sys.—II, Vol. 46, No. 9, pp. 1214, 1999.

Education

He received the B.Sc. degree in physics in 1962 and the D.Sc. degree from

Queen's University Queen's or Queens University may refer to: *Queen's University at Kingston, Ontario, Canada *Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK **Queen's University of Belfast (UK Parliament constituency) (1918–1950) **Queen's University of Belfast ...

Belfast Belfast ( , ; from ga, Béal Feirste , meaning 'mouth of the sand-bank ford') is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan on the east coast. It is the 12th-largest city in the United Kingdo ...

. He completed his D.Phil. at

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

in 1966, under

Harold Max Rosenberg Harold Max Rosenberg (26 August 1922 – 21 November 1993), was a distinguished experimental physicist who is notable for two successful textbooks: ''Low Temperature Solid State Physics'' (1963) and ''The Solid State'' (1975) and over one hundred ...

, with a thesis entitled ''Experiments on Spin Phonon Interactions'' in the area of paramagnetic crystals at very low temperatures.

Career

He performed postdoctoral research on superfluid

helium Helium (from el, ἥλιος, helios, lit=sun) is a chemical element with the symbol He and atomic number 2. It is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, inert, monatomic gas and the first in the noble gas group in the periodic table. ...

Duke University Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...

, Durham,

North Carolina North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and So ...

. He joined

Lancaster University Lancaster University (legally The University of Lancaster) is a public university, public research university in Lancaster, Lancashire, Lancaster, Lancashire, England. The university was established in 1964 by royal charter, as one of several pla ...

, UK, in 1968, where he is now a Professor of Physics. His research interests span superfluid

helium-4 Helium-4 () is a stable isotope of the element helium. It is by far the more abundant of the two naturally occurring isotopes of helium, making up about 99.99986% of the helium on Earth. Its nucleus is identical to an alpha particle, and consis ...

medical physics Medical physics deals with the application of the concepts and methods of physics to the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of human diseases with a specific goal of improving human health and well-being. Since 2008, medical physics has been incl ...

, and

nonlinear dynamics. The particular sub-topics are: (a) magnetism including, especially, studies of spin-phonon interactions in rare-earth ethylsulphate crystals; (b) quantum fluids and liquid helium-4 in particular; (c) nonlinear dynamics and fluctuational phenomena including applications to physiology. Since 2009, he is the Editor-in-Chief of

Fluctuation and Noise Letters ''Fluctuation and Noise Letters'' (''FNL'') is a journal published by World Scientific since 2001. It is at present the only journal solely dedicated to interdisciplinary articles on fluctuations and noise in physical, biological, and technological ...

Honors

McClintock is a Fellow of the

Institute of Physics The Institute of Physics (IOP) is a UK-based learned society and professional body that works to advance physics education, research and application. It was founded in 1874 and has a worldwide membership of over 20,000. The IOP is the Physica ...

Books by McClintock

* Aneta Stefanovska and P. V. E. McClintock (Eds.), ''Physics of Biological Oscillators: New Insights into Non-Equilibrium and Non-Autonomous Systems'', Springer, 2021. * Frank Moss and P. V. E. McClintock (Eds.), ''Noise in Nonlinear Dynamical Systems,'' Cambridge University Press, 1989, . * P. V. E. McClintock, D. J. Meredith and J. K. Wigmore, ''Low-Temperature Physics: An Introduction for Scientists and Engineers,'' Blackie, 1992, . * P. V. E. McClintock, D. J. Meredith and J. K. Wigmore, ''Matter at Low Temperatures,'' Blackie, 1984, .

Notes

External links

*
McClintock homepage
{{DEFAULTSORT:McClintock, Peter V. E. 1940 births Living people People from Omagh Alumni of the University of Oxford Alumni of Queen's University Belfast Probability theorists Academics of Lancaster University Rare earth scientists British expatriates in the United States Scientists from County Tyrone 20th-century physicists from Northern Ireland 21st-century physicists from Northern Ireland