James Bruce French (1921–2002) was a Canadian-American theoretical physicist, specializing in nuclear physics. J. Bruce French received in 1942 his bachelor's degree in physics from Dalhousie University and served during WWII in the

Royal Canadian Navy The Royal Canadian Navy (RCN; french: Marine royale canadienne, ''MRC'') is the naval force of Canada. The RCN is one of three environmental commands within the Canadian Armed Forces. As of 2021, the RCN operates 12 frigates, four attack subma ...

, performing acoustical studies related to antisubmarine warfare. He received his Ph.D. from MIT in 1948 with a thesis on relativistic calculation of the

Lamb shift In physics, the Lamb shift, named after Willis Lamb, is a difference in energy between two energy levels 2''S''1/2 and 2''P''1/2 (in term symbol notation) of the hydrogen atom which was not predicted by the Dirac equation, according to which th ...

. From 1948 to 1950 French was a research associate at MIT. At the University of Rochester, he was from 1950 to 1951 a research fellow, from 1951 to 1956 an assistant professor, from 1956 to 1960 an associate professor, and from 1960 to 1992 a full professor, retiring in 1992 as professor emeritus. He did pioneering research on

deuteron Deuterium (or hydrogen-2, symbol or deuterium, also known as heavy hydrogen) is one of two stable isotopes of hydrogen (the other being protium, or hydrogen-1). The nucleus of a deuterium atom, called a deuteron, contains one proton and one n ...

stripping ( direct reactions), the

nuclear shell model In nuclear physics, atomic physics, and nuclear chemistry, the nuclear shell model is a model of the atomic nucleus which uses the Pauli exclusion principle to describe the structure of the nucleus in terms of energy levels. The first shell ...

, and statistical spectroscopy. He and his student Malcolm H. Macfarlane (1933–2008) published in 1960 the extensive review article ''Stripping reactions and the structure of light and intermediate nuclei'', which has been cited over 700 times. In the last stage of his career he did research on "development and application of

central limit theorem In probability theory, the central limit theorem (CLT) establishes that, in many situations, when independent random variables are summed up, their properly normalized sum tends toward a normal distribution even if the original variables themsel ...

s on groups for studying the "smoothed" behavior of complicated

quantum systems Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistry, qu ...

; and extended random-matrix and related methods for studying

quantum chaos Quantum chaos is a branch of physics which studies how chaotic classical dynamical systems can be described in terms of quantum theory. The primary question that quantum chaos seeks to answer is: "What is the relationship between quantum mech ...

." He was a co-author of a highly cited review article on random-matrix physics, published in 1981. J. Bruce French was the author or co-author of about 100 research articles and reviews. He was the thesis supervisor for 23 doctoral students. In April 1993 the University of Rochester held a symposium in his honor. He was predeceased by his wife and survived by a daughter and two sons.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:French, James Bruce American nuclear physicists Canadian nuclear physicists Dalhousie University alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni University of Rochester faculty Fellows of the American Physical Society 1921 births 2002 deaths Canadian emigrants to the United States