Synopsis
Joseph H Hamilton is a world-leading nuclear physicist and the Landon C Garland Distinguished Professor of Physics at Vanderbilt University. He retired in 2022 after 64 years on the faculty and a career of major contributions in research, education, formation of collaborations, and construction of new facilities. His influence on the field of nuclear physics has been enormous and his mentorship of new talent profound. Starting from early life in a depression-era small town, he built a long and highly successful career in science and even in the interface between science and religion with extensive writings and lectures. Some of Hamilton's colleagues have summarized in this book his major scientific discoveries, his development of new physics consortia and facilities, teaching of undergraduates, mentorship of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, and devotion to building collaborations across the US, Europe, and Asia. He has published over a thousand scientific papers and is known for seminal contributions in a variety of important areas in nuclear science. One major discovery has been the co-existence of very different shapes in a single nucleus, once thought impossible and which has led to significant new insights into the fascinating quantum world of the atomic nucleus. Another was the discovery of element 117, as he led the formation of the consortium to perform these difficult measurements and then suggested the name adopted for this new element, Tennessine. This book includes his own summary on a remarkable career and the heartfelt comments of people that have so greatly benefited from his work and partnership. All together, these chapters will show future generations what it means and what is needed to become a great scientist as well as an incredible human being.
About the Authors
Da Hsuan Feng, completed his BA from Drew University and received his PhD in theoretical physics from the University of Minnesota (1972). Throughout his career, he had held the position of the M. Russell Wehr Chair Professor of Drexel University, the United States National Science Foundation Program Director in Theoretical Physics and the Vice President for Research at the University of Texas at Dallas, the Senior Vice President of National Cheng Kung University, National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan, and Special Advisor to the Rector and Director of Global Strategies of Macau University, respectively. Feng is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and is the honorary/adjunct professor of fifteen Chinese institutes, which included Fudan University, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Lanzhou University, Northeast University, Jilin University. Currently he is also a member of the International Advisory Board in Hainan University in China, Asia University in Taiwan and Binus University in Indonesia.
Mark A Riley earned a B.Sc.(HONS) in physics and a PhD in nuclear physics, both from the University of Liverpool in England. He worked as a research associate at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen, and at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee. He then served on the faculty of the University of Liverpool as an Advanced Fellow. He joined Florida State University in spring 1991 as an assistant professor. He was named the Raymond K. Sheline Professor of Physics in 2001 and was selected as a Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor in 2014. He was elected chair of the Department of Physics from 2007 to 2013. He has served as the Dean of The Graduate School at FSU since 2017. In 2022 he also served as the interim Vice-President for Research. His research involves the detection of gamma-ray emission signals from excited atomic nuclei under extreme conditions. High-resolution gamma-ray detection plays a ubiquitous role in nuclear science, and he has been deeply involved in the development and use of the world's most powerful gamma-ray detector systems, such as, Gammasphere and GRETINA-GRETA. He has served on the Users Executive Committees at the national laboratories of Oak Ridge, Argonne, and Michigan State University. Other national level committee participation has included the Nuclear Science Advisory Committee to the DOE and NSF, and the Program Advisory Committees of national laboratories at Berkeley, Argonne and iTHEMBA LABS in South Africa. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and is a past chair of the APS's Publication Oversight Committee. Riley's publication record includes ~200 research articles and he has delivered ~100 invited talks.
Lee L Riedinger is an emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Tennessee Knoxville and received a PhD from Vanderbilt University in 1968. His field of research was experimental nuclear physics, emphasizing properties of high-spin states in deformed nuclei. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1983–84, he was the science advisor to Tennessee Senator Howard Baker, who was then the majority leader of the U.S. Senate. He has served in a number of administrative positions at the university, including three stints as the Vice Chancellor for Research. In 1999 he was one of the leaders of the successful UT effort to choose a partner (Battelle) and bid on the Oak Ridge National Laboratory management contract. From 2000 to 2004, he served as the ORNL Deputy Director for Science and Technology. After his return to the university, he was appointed as the first director of the UT/ORNL Bredesen Center, which is the academic home of new doctoral programs in energy science and in data science. He retired at the end of 2019 and has written a book on the long history of the partnership between UT and Oak Ridge: Critical Connections: The University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge from the Dawn of the Atomic Age to the Present.
William H Brantley earned a Bachelor of Science degree in physics from Mercer University and both a Master of Science and PhD in physics from Vanderbilt University. After a post-doctoral fellowship and temporary appointment as a staff member at the Technological University in Delft, The Netherlands, he joined the physics department faculty of Furman University, serving as chair for twelve years. His professional affiliations have included membership in the American Association of Physics Teachers, American Physical Society, the Southeastern Section of the American Physical Society, and honor societies Sigma Pi Sigma, Kappa Delta Pi, and the Society of the Sigma Xi. He was a founding member of the Executive Board of the UNISOR Consortium, a division of ORAU, located at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Established as a user group in 1971 and supported by 10 member universities and the US Department of Energy, it provided facilities for physicists to measure decay processes of radioactive isotopes to determine the validity of nuclear models. UNIRIB came online in 1981. UNISOR/UNIRIB was ended in June 2015 and in 2022 the 50th anniversary of the first experiment was celebrated. He is an author on a number of journal articles in nuclear physics and editor of various monographs and reports on physics. Brantley is the 2005 recipient of the George B Pegram Award for "excellence in the teaching of physics in the Southeast." He won the 2011–2012 Alester G Furman Jr. and Janie Earle Furman annual award for meritorious teaching at Furman University. Throughout his career he has taught hundreds of undergraduate courses to thousands of students. He has also mentored several hundred physics majors who have gone on to pursue graduate study and careers in the sciences. In 2011 he became a founding member of the Editorial Board of a new book series, Undergraduate Lecture Notes in Physics (ULNP) published by Springer Nature. There are now well over a hundred books in the series. The ULNP series provides a home for useful non-standard teaching material at an undergraduate level and includes books that supplement core curriculum, cover non-core topics, or cover the core curriculum in an unusual way. Brantley continues to serve on the ULNP Editorial Board of Springer Nature and to teach physics at Furman University.
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