Thomas Michael O'Neil (born September 2, 1940 in Hibbing, Minnesota) is an American physicist who specializes in plasma physics.

Early life and career

O’Neil obtained his bachelor's degree at

California State University, Long Beach California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) is a public research university in Long Beach, California. The 322-acre campus is the second largest of the 23-school California State University system (CSU) and one of the largest universities i ...

in 1962, and then his master's degree and Ph.D. at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) in 1964 and 1965 respectively. From 1965 to 1967, he was a scientist at General Atomics and from 1967 at UCSD as an assistant professor and later a professor. From 1980 to 1984, he was on the advisory board of the Institute of Fusion Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.

Honors and awards

O'Neil 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 ...

. In 1971, O'Neil was awarded the Sloan Research Fellowship by the

Alfred P. Sloan Foundation The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is an American philanthropic nonprofit organization. It was established in 1934 by Alfred P. Sloan Jr., then-president and chief executive officer of General Motors. The Sloan Foundation makes grants to support or ...

. From 1979 to 1983, he was co-editor of the Physical Review Letters. In 1991, he received 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 ...

with John Malmberg and Charles Driscoll for their studies of non-neutral plasmas. In 1996, he received the James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics for "''seminal contributions to plasma theory, including extension of Landau damping to the nonlinear regime and demonstration of the importance of particle trapping; discovery of the plasma-wave echo; and pioneering studies of the confinement, transport, and thermal equilibria of

non-neutral plasmas A non-neutral plasma is a plasma whose net charge creates an electric field large enough to play an important or even dominant role in the plasma dynamics.R. C. Davidson, "Physics of Non-neutral Plasmas", (Addison-Wesley, Redwood City, CA, 1990) Th ...

, liquids and crystals. His theoretical work and active guidance of experiments with trapped, non-neutral plasmas provide much of the foundation for this branch of plasma physics''".

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:ONeil, Thomas Michael 1940 births Living people People from Hibbing, Minnesota American plasma physicists Fellows of the American Physical Society Sloan Research Fellows University of California, San Diego alumni California State University, Long Beach alumni Scientists from Minnesota