Peter Vaughan Elsmere McClintock (born 17 October 1940) is a physicist notable for his scientific work on

superfluid Superfluidity is the characteristic property of a fluid with zero viscosity which therefore flows without any loss of kinetic energy. When stirred, a superfluid forms vortex, vortices that continue to rotate indefinitely. Superfluidity occurs ...

s and

stochastic Stochastic (; ) is the property of being well-described by a random probability distribution. ''Stochasticity'' and ''randomness'' are technically distinct concepts: the former refers to a modeling approach, while the latter describes phenomena; i ...

nonlinear dynamics In mathematics and science, a nonlinear system (or a non-linear system) is a system in which the change of the output is not proportional to the change of the input. Nonlinear problems are of interest to engineers, biologists, physicists, mathem ...

.IEEE Trans. Circ. & Sys.—II, Vol. 46, No. 9, pp. 1214, 1999.

Education

He received the B.Sc. degree in physics in 1962 and the D.Sc. degree from Queen's University,

Belfast Belfast (, , , ; from ) is the capital city and principal port of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan and connected to the open sea through Belfast Lough and the North Channel (Great Britain and Ireland), North Channel ...

Northern Ireland Northern Ireland ( ; ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, part of the United Kingdom in the north-east of the island of Ireland. It has been #Descriptions, variously described as a country, province or region. Northern Ireland shares Repub ...

. He completed his D.Phil. at

Oxford University The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the second-oldest continuously operating u ...

in 1966, under Harold Max Rosenberg, with a thesis entitled ''Experiments on Spin Phonon Interactions'' in the area of paramagnetic crystals at very low temperatures.

Career

He performed postdoctoral research on

helium Helium (from ) is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol He and atomic number 2. It is a colorless, odorless, non-toxic, inert gas, inert, monatomic gas and the first in the noble gas group in the periodic table. Its boiling point is ...

Duke University Duke University is a Private university, private research university in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity, North Carolina, Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1 ...

Durham Durham most commonly refers to: *Durham, England, a cathedral city in north east England **County Durham, a ceremonial county which includes Durham *Durham, North Carolina, a city in North Carolina, United States Durham may also refer to: Places ...

North Carolina North Carolina ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, South Carolina to the south, Georgia (U.S. stat ...

. He joined

Lancaster University Lancaster University (officially The University of Lancaster) is a collegiate public university, public research university in Lancaster, Lancashire, England. The university was established in 1964 by royal charter, as one of several new univer ...

, UK, in 1968, where he is now a professor of physics. His research interests span

helium-4 Helium-4 () is a stable isotope of the element helium. It is by far the more abundant of the two naturally occurring isotopes of helium, making up about 99.99986% of the helium on Earth. Its nucleus is identical to an alpha particle, and consi ...

medical physics Medical physics deals with the application of the concepts and methods of physics to the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of human diseases with a specific goal of improving human health and well-being. Since 2008, medical physics has been incl ...

, and

. The particular sub-topics are: (a) magnetism including, especially, studies of spin-phonon interactions in rare-earth ethylsulphate crystals; (b) quantum fluids and liquid helium-4 in particular; (c) nonlinear dynamics and fluctuational phenomena including applications to physiology. Since 2009, he is the editor-in-chief of ''

Fluctuation and Noise Letters ''Fluctuation and Noise Letters'' (''FNL'') is a journal published by World Scientific since 2001. It is at present the only journal solely dedicated to interdisciplinary articles on fluctuations and noise in physical, biological, and technological ...

''.

Honors

McClintock is a fellow of the

Institute of Physics The Institute of Physics (IOP) is a UK-based not-for-profit learned society and professional body that works to advance physics education, physics research, research and applied physics, application. It was founded in 1874 and has a worldwide ...

Books by McClintock

Aneta Stefanovska Aneta Stefanovska is a Macedonian-born, Slovenian-British biophysicist. She is a professor of physics at Lancaster University. Research Stefanovska's research concerns biological oscillations, particularly in the blood circulatory system, and th ...

and P. V. E. McClintock (Eds.), ''Physics of Biological Oscillators: New Insights into Non-Equilibrium and Non-Autonomous Systems'', Springer, 2021. * Frank Moss and P. V. E. McClintock (Eds.), ''Noise in Nonlinear Dynamical Systems,'' Cambridge University Press, 1989, . * P. V. E. McClintock, D. J. Meredith and J. K. Wigmore, ''Low-Temperature Physics: An Introduction for Scientists and Engineers,'' Blackie, 1992, . * P. V. E. McClintock, D. J. Meredith and J. K. Wigmore, ''Matter at Low Temperatures,'' Blackie, 1984, .

Notes

External links

*
McClintock homepage
{{DEFAULTSORT:McClintock, Peter V. E. 1940 births Living people People from Omagh Alumni of the University of Oxford Alumni of Queen's University Belfast Probability theorists Academics of Lancaster University Rare earth scientists British expatriates in the United States Scientists from County Tyrone 20th-century physicists from Northern Ireland 21st-century physicists from Northern Ireland