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Berni Julian Alder (September 9, 1925 – September 7, 2020) was a German-born American
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 cau ...
specialized in
statistical mechanics In physics, statistical mechanics is a mathematical framework that applies statistical methods and probability theory to large assemblies of microscopic entities. It does not assume or postulate any natural laws, but explains the macroscopic b ...
, and a pioneer of computational modelling of matter.


Biography

Alder was born in
Duisburg Duisburg () is a city in the Ruhr metropolitan area of the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Lying on the confluence of the Rhine and the Ruhr rivers in the center of the Rhine-Ruhr Region, Duisburg is the 5th largest city in ...
, Germany, in September 1925, to Jewish parents, a
chemist A chemist (from Greek ''chēm(ía)'' alchemy; replacing ''chymist'' from Medieval Latin ''alchemist'') is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties. Chemists carefully describe th ...
and a homemaker. After the
Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
s came to power, the family moved to Zurich, Switzerland. Fearing an invasion by Nazi Germany after the outbreak of
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
, the family applied for a visa to the United States, which was granted in 1941. They left by sealed train from neutral Switzerland to (formally neutral) Spain, then to Portugal, where they took a ship to the US. Following a stint in the US Navy after US entry into the war, he obtained a BSc in chemistry from the
University of California at Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of Californi ...
and a master's degree in chemical engineering from the same institution in 1947. He went to the
California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...
to study under
John Gamble Kirkwood John "Jack" Gamble Kirkwood (May 30, 1907, Gotebo, Oklahoma – August 9, 1959, New Haven, Connecticut) was a noted chemist and physicist, holding faculty positions at Cornell University, the University of Chicago, California Institute of Technol ...
for his PhD in 1948 and worked for the investigation of phase transitions in hard-sphere gas with
Stan Frankel Stanley Phillips Frankel (1919 – May, 1978) was an American computer scientist. He worked in the Manhattan Project and developed various computers as a consultant. Early life He was born in Los Angeles, attended graduate school at the Univers ...
, where he got the idea to use the
Monte Carlo method Monte Carlo methods, or Monte Carlo experiments, are a broad class of computational algorithms that rely on repeated random sampling to obtain numerical results. The underlying concept is to use randomness to solve problems that might be deter ...
. After he finished at Caltech in 1952, he went to Berkeley and worked part-time at Berkeley to teach chemistry and part-time as a consultant under the suggestion of
Edward Teller Edward Teller ( hu, Teller Ede; January 15, 1908 – September 9, 2003) was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist who is known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb" (see the Teller–Ulam design), although he did not care for ...
in the nuclear weapons program for the
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 ...
to help with the equations of state. In collaboration with Thomas Everett Wainwright, and Mary Ann Mansigh, he developed techniques for molecular dynamics simulation in the mid-1950s, including the liquid-solid phase transition for hard sphere and the velocity autocorrelations function decay in liquids. Alder, along with Teller, was one of the founders of the Department of Applied Science in 1963. He was a professor of Applied Science at the University of California at Davis, and later professor emeritus. In 2001, he was awarded the
Boltzmann Medal The Boltzmann Medal (or Boltzmann Award) is a prize awarded to physicists that obtain new results concerning statistical mechanics; it is named after the celebrated physicist Ludwig Boltzmann. The Boltzmann Medal is awarded once every three years ...
for inventing technique of molecular dynamics simulation. He was elected a Fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...
in 2008. In 2009, he was awarded the
National Medal of Science The National Medal of Science is an honor bestowed by the President of the United States to individuals in science and engineering who have made important contributions to the advancement of knowledge in the fields of behavioral and social scienc ...
. Alder was a
Guggenheim Fellow Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...
. He was the editor of the book series Methods in Computational Physics and the founder of the magazine Computing. Alder died on September 7, 2020, of
heart failure Heart failure (HF), also known as congestive heart failure (CHF), is a syndrome, a group of signs and symptoms caused by an impairment of the heart's blood pumping function. Symptoms typically include shortness of breath, excessive fatigue, ...
.


References


External links


An Interview with Bernie Alder by George Michael, Stories of the Development of Large Scale Scientific Computing at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory



Oral History interview transcript for Berni Alder on 18 June 1990, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library and Archives
{{DEFAULTSORT:Alder, Berni 1925 births 2020 deaths 21st-century American physicists American people of German-Jewish descent California Institute of Technology alumni Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellows of the American Physical Society Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United States Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory staff Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences National Medal of Science laureates Scientific computing researchers UC Berkeley College of Chemistry alumni University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty University of California, Davis faculty German emigrants to Switzerland