Ravindra Nath Sudan (also called Ravi Sudan; June 8, 1931 – January 22, 2009) was an Indian-American

electrical engineer Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

and

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 specialized in plasma physics. He was known for independently discovering the whistler instability in 1963, an instability which causes audible low-frequency

radio wave Radio waves are a type of electromagnetic radiation with the longest wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum, typically with frequencies of 300 gigahertz (GHz) and below. At 300 GHz, the corresponding wavelength is 1 mm (short ...

s to be emitted in the magnetosphere in the form of whistler waves. He also pioneered the study of the generation and propagation of intense

ion beam An ion beam is a type of charged particle beam consisting of ions. Ion beams have many uses in electronics manufacturing (principally ion implantation) and other industries. A variety of ion beam sources exists, some derived from the mercury ...

s, and contributed to theories 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 ...

and plasma turbulence.

Early life and career

Sudan studied at Punjab University (Bachelor's degree in 1948) and at the India Institute of Science, where he received his diploma in 1952. In 1955, he received his doctorate in electrical engineering from

Imperial College London Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cu ...

, where he was a Tata Fellow. He then worked as an engineer at the

British Thomson-Houston Company British Thomson-Houston (BTH) was a British engineering and heavy industrial company, based at Rugby, Warwickshire, England, and founded as a subsidiary of the General Electric Company (GE) of Schenectady, New York, United States. They were kno ...

until 1957 and then at

Imperial Chemical Industries Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) was a British chemical company. It was, for much of its history, the largest manufacturer in Britain. It was formed by the merger of four leading British chemical companies in 1926. Its headquarters were at M ...

. From 1958, he was a scientist at

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 Simpson Linke's electrical engineering laboratory). His studies of power cut-off devices there led him to plasma physics. In 1959, he became assistant professor there and 1968 professor of electrical engineering and applied physics. He was IBM Professor of Engineering there from 1975 and from 1975 to 1985, the director of the Laboratory for Plasma Studies. He retired as Professor Emeritus in 2001. In 1984, he founded the

Cornell Theory Center The Cornell University Center for Advanced Computing (CAC), housed at Frank H. T. Rhodes Hall on the campus of Cornell University, is one of five original centers in the National Science Foundation's Supercomputer Centers Program. It was formerl ...

with

Kenneth G. Wilson Kenneth Geddes "Ken" Wilson (June 8, 1936 – June 15, 2013) was an American theoretical physicist and a pioneer in leveraging computers for studying particle physics. He was awarded the 1982 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on phase ...

and was its deputy director from 1985 to 1987. In 1970–71, he headed the theoretical plasma physics department at the

US Naval Research Laboratory The United States Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) is the corporate research laboratory for the United States Navy and the United States Marine Corps. It was founded in 1923 and conducts basic scientific research, applied research, technological ...

. From 1970 to 1973, he was a visiting scientist at the International Center for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste and in 1975 at the

Institute for Advanced Study The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholar ...

Princeton Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nine ...

. In 1983, he was a Senior Research Fellow of the Fusion Research Institute at the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

Honors and awards

In 1968, Sudan was 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 1989, he received the James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics. In 1994, he received the gold medal from the

Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences The Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences (Czech: ''Československá akademie věd'', Slovak: ''Česko-slovenská akadémia vied'') was established in 1953 to be the scientific center for Czechoslovakia. It was succeeded by the Czech Academy of Science ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sudan, Ravindra Nath American physicists Indian physicists 1931 births 2009 deaths Cornell University faculty Fellows of the American Physical Society