Wick C. Haxton (born August 21, 1949, in
Santa Cruz, California) is an American theoretical nuclear physicist and
astrophysicist.
He is a professor of physics at the
University of California, Berkeley and senior faculty scientist at
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), commonly referred to as the Berkeley Lab, is a United States Department of Energy National Labs, United States national laboratory that is owned by, and conducts scientific research on behalf of, t ...
.
He was appointed a co-editor of the journal ''
Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Science'' as of 2023. In 2024, he was elected to the
American Philosophical Society.
Education
Haxton grew up in Santa Cruz,
studied from 1967 at the
University of California, Santa Cruz (BA in physics and mathematics 1971) and received his doctorate in 1976 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 ...
for his work on ''Semileptonic Weak Interactions in Complex Nuclei'' (1975).
Career
From 1975 to 1977 he worked at the Institute for Nuclear Physics of the
University of Mainz and then until 1985 as Oppenheimer Fellow in the theoretical division of the
Los Alamos National Laboratory. After a year as assistant professor at
Purdue University in 1984 he became associate professor and in 1987 professor at the
University of Washington. He remained there as professor of physics and astronomy until 2009, serving from 1991 to 2006 as director of the National Institute for Nuclear Theory (INT). In 2009 he left the University of Washington to become professor of physics at the
University of California, Berkeley and senior faculty scientist at
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), commonly referred to as the Berkeley Lab, is a United States Department of Energy National Labs, United States national laboratory that is owned by, and conducts scientific research on behalf of, t ...
.
Research
Haxton is engaged in nuclear astrophysics (supernovae, the solar neutrino problem, nucleosynthesis), neutrino physics (neutrino oscillations, neutrinoless
double beta decay, neutrino properties), many-body theory (effective theories) in nuclear physics (as well as in atomic physics and condensed matter physics), and tests of symmetries of fundamental interactions (parity, CP-symmetry, lepton number).
Haxton and his colleagues put forward a method for the formulation of an effective field theory for shell model using the harmonic oscillator basis as a regulator.
He led the early efforts to convert the Homestake Mine in
South Dakota to scientific use as the Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory, but left the project after the mine was flooded in 2003.
Haxton has been a consultant for
Los Alamos National Laboratory,
Argonne National Laboratory
Argonne National Laboratory is a science and engineering research United States Department of Energy National Labs, national laboratory operated by University of Chicago, UChicago Argonne LLC for the United States Department of Energy. The facil ...
,
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is a federal research facility in Livermore, California, United States. The lab was originally established as the University of California Radiation Laboratory, Livermore Branch in 1952 in response ...
,
Brookhaven National Laboratory,
TRIUMF
TRIUMF is Canada's national particle accelerator centre. It is considered Canada's premier physics laboratory, and consistently regarded as one of the world's leading subatomic physics research centers. Owned and operated by a consortium of uni ...
,
Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and various other laboratories and university facilities over the past two decades.
Awards and honors
He 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 ...
(1987), and in the 1990s served as chair of the Division of Nuclear Physics and the Division of Astrophysics.
He is a member of the
United States National Academy of Sciences (1999),
and a Fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the
American Association for the Advancement of Science
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...
(1988),
and the Washington State Academy of Sciences.
He was a Guggenheim Fellow (2000–2001), Visiting Miller Professor at Berkeley (2001),
Bethe Lecturer at Cornell University (2001)
and received the 2004 Hans Bethe Prize of the American Physical Society for his contributions and scientific leadership in neutrino astrophysics and especially for the connection of nuclear physics theory with experiments and observations in nuclear astrophysics and astrophysics (eulogy).
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Haxton, Wick
1949 births
Living people
People from Santa Cruz, California
University of California, Santa Cruz alumni
Stanford University alumni
University of Washington faculty
University of California, Berkeley faculty
Los Alamos National Laboratory personnel
Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
21st-century American physicists
Fellows of the American Physical Society
Members of the American Philosophical Society