Ronald Fuchs (January 27, 1932 - November 10, 2012) was an

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the " United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, ...

theoretical physicist and professor at

Iowa State University Iowa State University of Science and Technology (Iowa State University, Iowa State, or ISU) is a public land-grant research university in Ames, Iowa. Founded in 1858 as the Iowa Agricultural College and Model Farm, Iowa State became one of the ...

. He is recognized for his work on electromagnetic properties of solids, light scattering of small particles and nonlocal optical phenomena.

Biography

Ernest Ronald Fuchs was born in

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the wor ...

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the ...

in 1932, only child of Swiss-born Ernest Fuchs and Hanna Berta (Herren) Fuchs. Fuchs graduated from

John Muir College John Muir College is one of the seven undergraduate colleges at the University of California San Diego (UCSD). The college is named after John Muir, the environmentalist and founder of the Sierra Club. It has a humanitarian emphasis focused o ...

, Pasadena, California in 1950, and attended

California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...

(Caltech) on a full scholarship. He graduated as top in his class with a B.S. in physics in 1954. He then pursued graduate studies in physics at the

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univers ...

, where he earned his M.S. in 1955 and his PhD in 1957. His PhD thesis focused on the absorption of light of

alkali metal halide In chemistry, alkali metal halides, or alkali halides, are the family of inorganic compounds with the chemical formula MX, where M is an alkali metal and X is a halogen. These compounds are the often commercially significant sources of these me ...

s, under the supervision of

Frederick Seitz Frederick Seitz (July 4, 1911 – March 2, 2008) was an American physicist and a pioneer of solid state physics and lobbyist. Seitz was the 4th president of Rockefeller University from 1968–1978, and the 17th president of the United States Nat ...

. After completing his doctoral studies, Fuchs worked as a

Fulbright Scholar The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people o ...

with a National Science Foundation Fellowship at the

University of Stuttgart The University of Stuttgart (german: Universität Stuttgart) is a leading research university located in Stuttgart, Germany. It was founded in 1829 and is organized into 10 faculties. It is one of the oldest technical universities in Germany wi ...

, Germany, and later worked at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern t ...

(MIT) Laboratory for Insulation Research from 1958 to 1961. In 1961, Fuchs joined the faculty of the Iowa State University Department of Physics and Astronomy as an assistant professor. He was promoted to full professorship in 1974 and became

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in 1996. In 1969, he became a fellow of the American Physical Society. Throughout his career, Fuchs arranged two year-long faculty leave as visiting professor to Germany. The first was to the

Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research The Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research (German: ''Max-Planck-Institut für Festkörperforschung'') was founded in 1969 and is one of the 82 Max Planck Institutes of the Max Planck Society. It is located on a campus in Stuttgart, togeth ...

from 1973 to 1974, and the second was to the

Freie Universitaet Berlin The Free University of Berlin (, often abbreviated as FU Berlin or simply FU) is a public university, public research university in Berlin, Germany. It is consistently ranked among Germany's best universities, with particular strengths in poli ...

and the

Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society The Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society (FHI) is a science research institute located at the heart of the academic district of Dahlem, in Berlin, Germany. The original Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electroch ...

from 1986 to 1987. He also took a year-long Overseas Fellowship at the

Cavendish Laboratory The Cavendish Laboratory is the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge, and is part of the School of Physical Sciences. The laboratory was opened in 1874 on the New Museums Site as a laboratory for experimental physics and is name ...

at the

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

in the

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from 1996 to 1997. He passed away in a house in

Ames, Iowa Ames () is a city in Story County, Iowa, United States, located approximately north of Des Moines in central Iowa. It is best known as the home of Iowa State University (ISU), with leading agriculture, design, engineering, and veterinary med ...

, as a consequence of a

plasmacytoma Plasmacytoma is a plasma cell dyscrasia in which a plasma cell tumour grows within soft tissue or within the axial skeleton. The International Myeloma Working Group lists three types: solitary plasmacytoma of bone (SPB); extramedullary plasmacy ...

Research

Fuchs worked on the theory of the optical properties and non-local effects of metals and insulators, including

thin film A thin film is a layer of material ranging from fractions of a nanometer ( monolayer) to several micrometers in thickness. The controlled synthesis of materials as thin films (a process referred to as deposition) is a fundamental step in many a ...

s, small particles, rough surfaces, and disordered systems. He also worked on surface reflectance spectroscopy and

electron energy loss spectroscopy In electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) a material is exposed to a beam of electrons with a known, narrow range of kinetic energies. Some of the electrons will undergo inelastic scattering, which means that they lose energy and have their pa ...

of inhomogeneous systems. The theory of Kliewer-Fuchs modes, related to vibrational modes found on the surface of insulating crystals, was developed by Fuchs and Kenneth Lee Kliewer in 1965. Fuchs developed the theory of surface modes in

ionic crystal In chemistry, an ionic crystal is a crystalline form of an ionic compound. They are solids consisting of ions bound together by their electrostatic attraction into a regular lattice. Examples of such crystals are the alkali halides, including pot ...

cubes exposed to a uniform electric fields.

Awards and honors

* For his 75th birthday, a conference was held in Puebla, Mexico in 2007 to honor Fuchs "in recognition for his contributions to nonlocal optics and optical properties of small particles and his fruitful collaborations with

Latin America Latin America or * french: Amérique Latine, link=no * ht, Amerik Latin, link=no * pt, América Latina, link=no, name=a, sometimes referred to as LatAm is a large cultural region in the Americas where Romance languages — languages derived ...

n physicists”. *He was given the American Physical Society recognition for Outstanding Referees in 2009.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fuchs, Ronald 1932 births 2012 deaths 20th-century American physicists Condensed matter physicists Iowa State University faculty University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign alumni Fellows of the American Physical Society