Uriel Frisch (born in

Agen Agen (, , ) is the prefecture of the Lot-et-Garonne department in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Southwestern France. It lies on the river Garonne, southeast of Bordeaux. In 2021, the commune had a population of 32,485. Geography The city of Agen l ...

, in France, on December 10, 1940) is a French mathematical physicist known for his work on

fluid dynamics In physics, physical chemistry and engineering, fluid dynamics is a subdiscipline of fluid mechanics that describes the flow of fluids – liquids and gases. It has several subdisciplines, including (the study of air and other gases in motion ...

and

turbulence In fluid dynamics, turbulence or turbulent flow is fluid motion characterized by chaotic changes in pressure and flow velocity. It is in contrast to laminar flow, which occurs when a fluid flows in parallel layers with no disruption between ...

Biography

From 1959 to 1963 Frisch was a student at the

École Normale Supérieure École or Ecole may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by Secondary education in France, secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing i ...

. Early in his graduate studies, he became interested in turbulence, under the mentorship of Robert Kraichnan, a former assistant to

Albert Einstein Albert Einstein (14 March 187918 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who is best known for developing the theory of relativity. Einstein also made important contributions to quantum mechanics. His mass–energy equivalence f ...

. Frisch earned a Ph.D. in 1967 from the

University of Paris The University of Paris (), known Metonymy, metonymically as the Sorbonne (), was the leading university in Paris, France, from 1150 to 1970, except for 1793–1806 during the French Revolution. Emerging around 1150 as a corporation associated wit ...

, and since then he has worked at the

French National Centre for Scientific Research The French National Centre for Scientific Research (, , CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,637 staff, including 11,137 tenured researchers, 13,415 engi ...

(CNRS). He retired in 2006, and became a director of research emeritus at CNRS.Curriculum vitae
retrieved 2012-03-05. Frisch's wife Hélène is also a physicist, and the grand daughter of mathematician Paul Lévy.

Research

Frisch is the author of a 1995 book on turbulence and of over 200 research publications. One of his most cited works, published in 1986, concerns the lattice gas automaton method of simulating fluid dynamics using a

cellular automaton A cellular automaton (pl. cellular automata, abbrev. CA) is a discrete model of computation studied in automata theory. Cellular automata are also called cellular spaces, tessellation automata, homogeneous structures, cellular structures, tessel ...

. The method used until that time, the HPP model, simulated particles moving in axis-parallel directions in a

square lattice In mathematics, the square lattice is a type of lattice in a two-dimensional Euclidean space. It is the two-dimensional version of the integer lattice, denoted as . It is one of the five types of two-dimensional lattices as classified by their ...

, but this model was unsatisfactory because it obeyed unwanted and unphysical

conservation law In physics, a conservation law states that a particular measurable property of an isolated physical system does not change as the system evolves over time. Exact conservation laws include conservation of mass-energy, conservation of linear momen ...

s (the

conservation of momentum In Newtonian mechanics, momentum (: momenta or momentums; more specifically linear momentum or translational momentum) is the product of the mass and velocity of an object. It is a vector quantity, possessing a magnitude and a direction. ...

within each axis-parallel line). Frisch and his co-authors Brosl Hasslacher and

Yves Pomeau Yves Pomeau, born in 1942, is a French mathematician and physicist, emeritus research director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, CNRS and corresponding member of the French Academy of Sciences, French Academy of sciences. He w ...

introduced a model using instead the

hexagonal lattice The hexagonal lattice (sometimes called triangular lattice) is one of the five two-dimensional Bravais lattice types. The symmetry category of the lattice is wallpaper group p6m. The primitive translation vectors of the hexagonal lattice form an ...

which became known as the FHP model after the initials of its inventors and which much more accurately simulated the behavior of actual fluids. Frisch is also known for his work with

Giorgio Parisi Giorgio Parisi (born 4 August 1948) is an Italian theoretical physicist, whose research has focused on quantum field theory, statistical mechanics In physics, statistical mechanics is a mathematical framework that applies statistical methods ...

on the analysis of the

fine structure In atomic physics, the fine structure describes the splitting of the spectral lines of atoms due to electron spin and relativistic corrections to the non-relativistic Schrödinger equation. It was first measured precisely for the hydrogen atom ...

of turbulent flows, for his early advocacy of

multifractal system A multifractal system is a generalization of a fractal system in which a single exponent (the fractal dimension) is not enough to describe its dynamics; instead, a continuous spectrum of exponents (the so-called singularity spectrum) is needed ...

s in modeling physical processes, and for his research on using transportation theory to reconstruct the distribution of matter in the early universe.

Awards and honors

Frisch won the Peccot Prize of the

Collège de France The (), formerly known as the or as the ''Collège impérial'' founded in 1530 by François I, is a higher education and research establishment () in France. It is located in Paris near La Sorbonne. The has been considered to be France's most ...

for his doctoral thesis in 1967, the Bazin Prize of the French Academy of Sciences in 1985, and the

Lewis Fry Richardson Lewis Fry Richardson, Fellow of the Royal Society, FRS (11 October 1881 – 30 September 1953) was an English mathematician, physicist, meteorologist, psychologist, and Pacifism, pacifist who pioneered modern mathematical techniques of weather ...

Medal of the

European Geosciences Union The European Geosciences Union (EGU) is a non-profit international union in the fields of Earth, planetary, and space sciences whose vision is to "realise a sustainable and just future for humanity and for the planet". The organisation has headq ...

"for his fundamental contributions to the understanding of turbulence" in 2003. He is a member of the

French Academy of Sciences The French Academy of Sciences (, ) is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French Scientific method, scientific research. It was at the forefron ...

since 2008.Les Membres de l’Académie des sciences élus en 2008 et 2009
retrieved 2012-03-05. He is an Officier of the

Ordre national du Mérite The (; ) is a French order of merit with membership awarded by the President of the French Republic, founded on 3 December 1963 by President Charles de Gaulle. The reason for the order's establishment was twofold: to replace the large number of ...

and the recipient of the 2010 Modesto Panetti e Carlo Ferrari prize. In 2020 he has been awarded with the prize EUROMECH, provided by the European Mechanics Society.

Selected publications

*. * *

References

External links