Frederick Williams Cummings (November 21, 1931 - January 31, 2019) was an American

theoretical physicist Theoretical physics is a branch of physics that employs mathematical models and abstractions of physical objects and systems to rationalize, explain, and predict natural phenomena. This is in contrast to experimental physics, which uses experi ...

and professor at the

University of California, Riverside The University of California, Riverside (UCR or UC Riverside) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Riverside, California, United States. It is one of the ten campuses of the University of Cali ...

. He specialised in

cavity quantum electrodynamics Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics (cavity QED) is the study of the interaction between light confined in a reflective cavity and atoms or other particles, under conditions where the quantum nature of photons is significant. It could in principle be ...

many-body theory The many-body problem is a general name for a vast category of physical problems pertaining to the properties of microscopic systems made of many interacting particles. Terminology ''Microscopic'' here implies that quantum mechanics has to be ...

non-linear dynamics In mathematics, a dynamical system is a system in which a function describes the time dependence of a point in an ambient space, such as in a parametric curve. Examples include the mathematical models that describe the swinging of a clock p ...

, and

biophysics Biophysics is an interdisciplinary science that applies approaches and methods traditionally used in physics to study biological phenomena. Biophysics covers all scales of biological organization, from molecular to organismic and populations ...

. He developed the

Jaynes–Cummings model In quantum optics, the Jaynes–Cummings model (sometimes abbreviated JCM) is a theoretical model that describes the system of a Two-level system, two-level atom interacting with a quantized mode of an optical cavity (or a bosonic field), with o ...

, one atom interacting with a quantized electromagnetic field; as well as the extension of this to ''N'' atoms, known as the Tavis–Cummings model.

Life

Frederick Williams Cummings was born in

New Orleans New Orleans (commonly known as NOLA or The Big Easy among other nicknames) is a Consolidated city-county, consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 383,997 at the 2020 ...

, Louisiana in 1931. He served in the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the primary Land warfare, land service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution.Article II, section 2, clause 1 of th ...

from 1950 to 1952, in the infantry in Korea. He received his

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...

from Louisiana State University in 1955 and his

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

from

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

in 1962.

Edwin Thompson Jaynes Edwin Thompson Jaynes (July 5, 1922 – April 30, 1998) was the Wayman Crow Distinguished Professor of Physics at Washington University in St. Louis. He wrote extensively on statistical mechanics and on foundations of probability and statistic ...

was his doctoral supervisor, with whom he worked on the Jaynes–Cumming model. While finishing his thesis, Cummings worked at the Aeronutronic Research Labs, Ford Motor Co. in Newport Beach, California from 1960 to 1963. He became a professor at

(UCR). With his doctoral student Michael Tavis, he extended the Jaynes–Cummings model to the Tavis–Cummings model in 1968. The revival probabilities predicted by Jaynes–Cumming model were first experimentally demonstrated in 1987 by Gerhard Rempe,

Herbert Walther Herbert Walther (January 19, 1935 in Ludwigshafen/Rhein, Germany – July 22, 2006 in Munich) was a leader in the fields of quantum optics and laser physics. He was a founding director of the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ) in Garchin ...

, and Norbert Klein. After thirty years at UCR Physics department, Cummings became

emeritus professor ''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus". In some c ...

in 1993. In the last twenty years his interest has turned to questions of

development Development or developing may refer to: Arts *Development (music), the process by which thematic material is reshaped * Photographic development *Filmmaking, development phase, including finance and budgeting * Development hell, when a proje ...

and

evolution Evolution is the change in the heritable Phenotypic trait, characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. It occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift act on genetic variation, re ...

. Cummings died on January 31, 2019, in

Marin County Marin County ( ) is a county located in the northwestern part of the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 262,231. Its county seat and largest city is San Rafael. Marin County is ac ...

, CA.

Personal life

In 1964, he married Kathleen Sturgis. They had one child.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Cummings, Fred 20th-century American physicists 21st-century American physicists American theoretical physicists Stanford University alumni University of California, Riverside faculty 1931 births 2019 deaths