Elliott Montroll

Elliott Waters Montroll (born May 4, 1916 in Pittsburgh , † December 3, 1983 in Chevy Chase (Maryland) ) was an American theoretical physicist and mathematician .

Life

Montroll was passionate about chemistry as a child and began studying chemistry in 1933 at the University of Pittsburgh , graduating in 1937 with a bachelor's degree. He then switched to mathematics and received his doctorate in Pittsburgh in 1939 with a thesis on the application of the theory of integral equations to kinetic gas theory ("Some Notes and Applications of the characteristic value theory of integral equations"). He was then 1939/40 research assistant in chemistry at Columbia University , where he worked with Joseph Mayer on statistical mechanics of real gases, and 1940/1 Sterling Research Fellow at Yale University , where he worked on the Ising model .

In 1941/2 he was at Cornell University and worked on the spectrum of elastic vibrations in crystal lattices, research that he continued in the 1950s. In 1942/3 he was an instructor for physics at Princeton University . In 1943 he became head of the mathematical research group at Kellex Corporation in New York City , which developed programs for neutron kinetics as part of the Manhattan Project . In 1944 he was at the Polytechnic Institute in Brooklyn as an adjunct professor of chemistry. From 1946 he was back at the University of Pittsburgh, first as an assistant and associate professor and finally with a full professorship in mathematics and physics. At the same time he was from 1948 to 1950 head of the research department for physics at the Office of Naval Research. In 1950 he became a Research Fellow of the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University , but in 1951 accepted a research professorship at the Institute of Hydrodynamics and Applied Mathematics at the University of Maryland . In 1960, he was Chief Scientist (Director of General Sciences) at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center of IBM . In 1963 he became Vice President of Research at the Institute for Defense Analyzes in Washington, DC

From 1966 until his retirement he was then "Albert Einstein Professor of Physics" and Director of the Institute for Fundamental Studies at the University of Rochester . Even after his retirement in 1981 he was active in research at the University of Maryland and the University of California, Irvine .

Montroll mainly worked in statistical mechanics and stochastic problems (such as random paths on grids), the methods of which he also applied to sociological and biological problems and in chemistry. He was a member of the JASON Defense Advisory Group .

Montroll had ten children, u. a. the Origami specialists John Montroll (which to be able to additionally have the ability to whistle in five octaves).

Prizes and awards

• 1959: Frederick W. Lanchester Prize
• 1969: Admission to the National Academy of Sciences
• 1972: Admission to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Fonts

• with Gordon F. Newell: "Topics in statistical mechanics of interacting particles", University of Maryland, 1952
• Published in: Fluctuation Phenomena, North Holland 1979
• with Maradudin, George Weiss: "Theory of lattice dynamics in the harmonic approximation", Academic Press 1963, 2nd edition with Ipatova 1971
• Montroll Dynamics of evolution of some socio-technical systems , Bulletin AMS, Vol 16, 1987, pp 1-46

Web links

• John J. O'Connor, Edmund F. Robertson :  Elliott Montroll. In: MacTutor History of Mathematics archive .
• Weiss's biography in the Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy, PDF file (822 kB)
• Biography at the APS

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Mayer, Montroll "Statistical mechanics of imperfect gases", Journal of Chemical Physics, Vol. 9, 1941, p. 626.
2. ^ Montroll "Statistical mechanics of nearest neighbor systems", Part 1,2, Journal of Chemical Physics, Vol. 9, 1941, p. 706, Vol. 10, 1942, p. 61, Newell, Montroll "On the theory of the Ising Model of Ferromagnetism ", Reviews of Modern Physics, Vol. 25, 1953, p. 353.
3. ^ Montroll "Frequency spectrum of crystalline solids", part 1,2, Journal of Chemical Physics, Vol. 10, 1942, p. 218, Vol. 11, 1943, p. 481.
4. ↑ z. B. Montroll "Social Dynamics and the quantifying forces", Proceedings of the National Academy, Vol. 75, 1978, p. 4633, with Shuler "Dynamics of Technical Evolution: Random Walk Model for the Research Enterprise", Proc.Nat.Acad ., Vol. 76, 1979, p. 6030.
5. ^ Frederick W. Lanchester Prize. (No longer available online.) Informs.org ( Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences ), archived from the original on October 2, 2015 ; accessed on February 16, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.