Peter Carruthers (1935 – August 3, 1997) was an American physicist best known for leading the theoretical division of

Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos National Laboratory (often shortened as Los Alamos and LANL) is one of the sixteen research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy (DOE), located a short distance northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, ...

from 1973 until 1980.

Early life and education

Peter Carruthers was born in

Lafayette, Indiana Lafayette ( , ) is a city in and the county seat of Tippecanoe County, Indiana, United States, located northwest of Indianapolis and southeast of Chicago. West Lafayette, on the other side of the Wabash River, is home to Purdue University, whi ...

, United States. He attended the

Carnegie Institute of Technology Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

graduating in 1957. He then studied 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 ...

where in 1961 he gained a PhD in theoretical physics. His doctoral advisor was

Hans Bethe Hans Albrecht Bethe (; July 2, 1906 – March 6, 2005) was a German-American theoretical physicist who made major contributions to nuclear physics, astrophysics, quantum electrodynamics, and solid-state physics, and who won the 1967 Nobel Prize ...

Career

After earning his PhD, he remained at Cornell University, where he quickly became a full professor. While there he supervised PhD students and post-doctoral fellows until retiring from the position in 1973, when he became the leader of the theoretical division at Los Alamos Laboratory. While there he oversaw the growth of the laboratory and developed an internationally renowned programme which focused on wide-ranging fundamental research. In 1980 he stepped down from this position but remained at Los Alamos until 1986, becoming a senior fellow and leader of the Elementary Particle and Field Theory Group. He then joined the University of Arizona as the head of the physics department. He later became the director of the Center for the Study of Complex Systems. Together with

Murray Gell-Mann Murray Gell-Mann (; September 15, 1929 – May 24, 2019) was an American physicist who received the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the theory of elementary particles. He was the Robert Andrews Millikan Professor of Theoretical ...

and others he played a role in the creation of the

Santa Fe Institute The Santa Fe Institute (SFI) is an independent, nonprofit theoretical research institute located in Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States and dedicated to the multidisciplinary study of the fundamental principles of complex adaptive systems, includ ...

Books

*Hadronic Multiparticle Production (Directions in High Energy Physics, Advanced) *Lectures on the Many-Electron Problem, R. Brout and P. Carruthers, Interscience Publishers, 1963 *Introduction to Unitary Symmetry, Peter A. Carruthers, Interscience Publishers, 1966

References

*http://www.nytimes.com/1997/08/08/us/peter-carruthers-61-physicist.html *http://library.web.cern.ch/library/archives/biographies/Carruthers_PA-199711.pdf {{DEFAULTSORT:Carruthers, Peter A. 1935 births 1997 deaths People from Lafayette, Indiana Carnegie Mellon University alumni Cornell University alumni Cornell University faculty University of Arizona faculty Los Alamos National Laboratory personnel 20th-century American physicists Theoretical physicists Santa Fe Institute people