Herbert S. Green

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Herbert ("Bert") Sydney Green (born December 17, 1920 in Ipswich , † February 16, 1999 in Adelaide ) was a British-Australian theoretical physicist.

Life

Green studied mathematics at the Royal College of Science and graduated with top marks from the Imperial College of Science and Technology, London in 1941 . His teachers included Sydney Chapman and William Penney . During the Second World War, he was an officer in the Meteorological Service of the Royal Air Force from 1941 to 1945 . He then went to the University of Edinburgh , where he received his doctorate in physics with Max Born in 1947 (Ph. D., A General Kinetic Theory of Liquids ), then was an ICI Fellow and received his doctorate again in 1949 (D. Sc., A unitary quantum electrodynamics ). In 1949/50 he was at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton and 1950/51 at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (with Erwin Schrödinger ). From 1951 until his retirement in 1985 he was Professor of Mathematical Physics at the University of Adelaide and temporarily Dean of the Mathematics Faculty. He was visiting professor at the University of Florida , Michigan State University and the University of Arizona , among others .

He worked with Max Born in statistical physics , especially kinetic equations for gases and liquids. The BBGKY hierarchy , a system of integro differential equations , which links the phase space distribution function of a group of interacting particles from a large total of particles with the particle distribution function, is based on both and J. Yvon (1935), John G. Kirkwood (1946) and Nikolai Nikolajewitsch Bogolyubow (1946) named. The starting point of the formalism is the classical Liouville equation . Green also extended the treatment to the quantum mechanical case with applications in liquid helium.

He also dealt with nuclear physics , cosmic radiation , elementary particle physics and quantum field theory and in general with the fundamentals of quantum mechanics and plasma physics (partly in collaboration with Roy Leipnik). He later turned to how the brain worked. According to Green, quantum mechanical processes have an influence on fundamental information processing processes in the brain, which can therefore be classified as a kind of quantum Turing machine . He wrote two books about it.

Green also dealt with environmental physics such as the spread of pollutants, which also led to a confrontation with the Australian provincial government in 1984, when Green saw and represented dangers to the environment in a planned petrochemical factory in the Spencer Gulf . The project was later abandoned.

In 1954 he became a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science . 1974 to 1976 he was President of the Australian Mathematical Society . He was also a member of the Royal Zoological Society of South Australia and the Australian Institute of Physics.

He had been married since 1951 and had two children.

Fonts

  • Information theory and quantum physics: physical foundations for understanding the conscious process , Springer Verlag 2000
  • with Terry Triffet Sources of Consciousness , World Scientific 1997
  • with Max Born A general kinetic theory of liquids , Cambridge University Press 1949
  • The molecular theory of fluids , North Holland 1952, Reprint Dover 1969
  • Molecular theory of fluids in Seeger, Temple (Ed.) Research Frontiers in Fluids Mechanics , Interscience 1965
  • with CA Hurst Order-disorder phenomena , Interscience 1964
  • Matrix methods in quantum mechanics , Noordhoff 1965 (foreword by Max Born)
    • German: quantum mechanics in algebraic representation , Springer Verlag, Heidelberger Taschenbücher, 1966 (also translated into Russian in 1968 and into Japanese in 1980)
  • Structure of Liquids , in Structure of Liquids , Encyclopedia of Physics / Handbuch der Physik, Volume 10, Springer Verlag 1960, pp. 1-133
  • with Roy B. Leipnik Sources of Plasma Physics , Wolters-Noordhoff 1970

literature

  • Angus Hurst: Herbert Sydney Green 1920-1999 . In: Historical Records of Australian Science . tape 14 , 2000, pp. 301–322 (English, org.au ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Born, Green A general kinetic theory of liquids I. The molecular distribution functions , Proc. Roy. Soc. A, Volume 188, 1946, pp. 10-18, Part II (Equilibrium properties) by Green, Proc. Roy. Soc. A, Vol. 189, 1947, pp. 103-117, Part III (Dynamicsl Properties) by Born, Green, Proc. Roy. Soc., A, Vol. 190, 1947, pp. 455-473, Part IV (Quantum Mechanics of Fluids) by Born, Green, Proc. Roy. Soc., A, Vol. 191, 1947, pp. 168-181, Part V (The kinetic basis of thermodynamics) by Born, Green, Proc. Roy. Soc., A, Vol. 192, 1948, pp. 166-180, Part VI (Liquid Helium II) by Green, Proc. Roy. Soc., A, Vol. 192, 1948, pp. 244-258. Also Born, Green The quantum theory of liquids , Nature, Volume 159, 1947, pp. 738-239. Born and Green's work was also published in book form in 1949 by Cambridge University Press.
  2. ↑ What led to mathematical work, which he characteristic identities analogous to the Cayley-Hamilton theorem of matrix algebra in representation theory of Lie algebras introduced
  3. ↑ z. B. Observation in Quantum Mechanics , Nuovo Cimento, Volume 9, 1958, pp. 880-889
personal data
SURNAME Green, Herbert S.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Green, Herbert Sydney; Green, Bert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British-Australian physicist
DATE OF BIRTH 17th December 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Ipswich
DATE OF DEATH February 16, 1999
Place of death Adelaide