Marshall Nicholas Rosenbluth (5 February 1927 – 28 September 2003) was an

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plasma physicist and member of the

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, and member of the

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. In 1997 he was awarded the National Medal of Science for discoveries in controlled thermonuclear fusion, contributions to plasma physics, and work in computational statistical mechanics. He was also a recipient of the E.O. Lawrence Prize (1964), the

Albert Einstein Award The Albert Einstein Award (sometimes mistakenly called the ''Albert Einstein Medal'' because it was accompanied with a gold medal) was an award in theoretical physics, given periodically from 1951 to 1979, that was established to recognize high ac ...

(1967), the James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics (1976), the Enrico Fermi Award (1985), and the

Hannes Alfvén Prize The Hannes Alfvén Prize is a prize established by the European Physical Society (EPS) Plasma Physics Division in 2000. The Prize is awarded annually by the European Physical Society at the EPS Conference on Plasma Physics for outstanding work in t ...

(2002).

Key scientific contributions

During his first post-doctoral position at

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(1949–1950), he derived the ''Rosenbluth formula'', which was the basis of the analysis used by Robert Hofstadter in his Nobel prize-winning experimental investigation of electron scattering. Hofstadter refers to this in his 1961 Nobel Lecture: "This behavior can be understood in terms of the theoretical scattering law developed by M. Rosenbluth in 1950". In 1953, Rosenbluth derived the

Metropolis algorithm A metropolis () is a large city or conurbation which is a significant economic, political, and cultural center for a country or region, and an important hub for regional or international connections, commerce, and communications. A big c ...

, based on generating a Markov chain which sampled fluid configurations according to the Boltzmann distribution. This algorithm was first presented in the paper " Equation of State Calculations by Fast Computing Machines", coauthored with his wife Arianna Rosenbluth (who wrote the first computer program to implement the method), Nicholas Metropolis, Augusta H. Teller and Edward Teller. This now-famous paper was cited in ''Computing in Science and Engineering'' as being among the top 10 algorithms having the "greatest influence on the development and practice of science and engineering in the 20th century." He and Arianna subsequently introduced the configurational-bias Monte Carlo method for simulating polymers. By the late 1950s, Rosenbluth turned his attention to the burgeoning discipline of plasma physics and quickly laid the foundation for many avenues of research in the field, particularly the theory of

plasma instabilities The stability of a plasma is an important consideration in the study of plasma physics. When a system containing a plasma is at equilibrium, it is possible for certain parts of the plasma to be disturbed by small perturbative forces acting on it ...

. Although he continued to work on plasma physics for the remainder of his career, he often made forays into other fields. For example, around 1980, he and coworkers produced a detailed analysis of the free electron laser, indicating how its spectral intensity can be optimized. He maintained a high productivity rate throughout his entire career. Indeed, only a few years before his death, Rosenbluth discovered the existence of residual flows (so-called ''Rosenbluth-Hinton flows''), a key result for understanding turbulence in tokamaks.

Early years

Rosenbluth was born into a Jewish family and graduated from

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in 1942. He did his undergraduate study at Harvard, graduating in 1946 (B.S.,

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), despite also serving in the U.S. Navy (1944–46) during this period. He received his Ph.D. in 1949 from the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

with

Enrico Fermi Enrico Fermi (; 29 September 1901 – 28 November 1954) was an Italian (later naturalized American) physicist and the creator of the world's first nuclear reactor, the Chicago Pile-1. He has been called the "architect of the nuclear age" an ...

. In 1950, Edward Teller, considered the father of the hydrogen bomb, recruited Rosenbluth to work at Los Alamos. Rosenbluth maintained this position until 1956. The research he conducted at Los Alamos led to the development of the H-bomb.

Additional information

Upon his retirement, he took on the responsibility of chief scientist of the Central Team for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) until 1999. Rosenbluth also served as a member of the JASON Defense Advisory Group. Rosenbluth was affectionately known as the ''Pope of Plasma Physics'' in reference to his deep understanding of the field.Kim A. McDonald
Nuclear Fusion Pioneer At UC San Diego Dies At 76
, obituary at the

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, University of Califor ...

website. Retrieved 2008-07-08.

Notes

References

* J.W. Van Dam (Ed), ''From Particles to Plasmas: Lectures Honoring Marshall N. Rosenbluth'',

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(1989) .

External links

1994 Audio Interview with Marshall Rosenbluth by Richard Rhodes
Voices of the Manhattan Project

MSS 670
Special Collections & Archives
UC San Diego Library.

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rosenbluth, Marshall 1927 births 2003 deaths American nuclear physicists Enrico Fermi Award recipients Harvard University alumni Institute for Advanced Study faculty Jewish American physicists American people of German-Jewish descent Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Monte Carlo methodologists National Medal of Science laureates Princeton University faculty University of Chicago alumni Stanford University faculty Stuyvesant High School alumni University of California, San Diego faculty Members of JASON (advisory group) American plasma physicists Scientists from New York (state) Fellows of the American Physical Society 20th-century American Jews 21st-century American Jews Members of the American Philosophical Society