Keith V. Roberts

Keith V. Roberts (born June 7, 1925 in London , † September 19, 1985 in Oxford ) was a British physicist. He was a pioneer in computational physics, studied controlled nuclear fusion and was one of the developers of the British hydrogen bomb .

Roberts studied physics at Christ's and Kings College, Cambridge University, graduating in 1945. He then worked under James Chadwick in the British atomic bomb program at the cyclotron in Liverpool before returning to the university for a doctorate. His research area at that time was quantum field theory. He was at Bristol University and the Institute for Advanced Study before returning to Kings College, Cambridge in 1952. In 1955 he went to the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWRE) in Aldermaston (under William Penney ) and was instrumental in the development of the British hydrogen bomb, which was tested in 1957. There he was superintendent in Thermonuclear Physics. From 1959 he was in research on civil nuclear fusion (after this became public at the Geneva Conference of 1958), first at AERE in Harwell and from 1962 in Culham (where the research was led by John Bertram Adams ). At first he headed an experimental department and later the theory department. There he developed in particular the numerical simulation (computer physics). In the early 1960s, for example, he published on the theory of pinch experiments.

He developed the Olympus software package for the organization of (Fortran) programs. He also published on software techniques (specifically in Algol and Fortran) and advocated the publication of computer programs.

He was editor of Computer Physics Communications and from 1968 co-editor of the Journal of Computational Physics. He was chairman of the Computing Group at the Institute of Physics.

Most recently he dealt with economics.

Fonts

• On the quantum theory of elementary particles, 2 parts, Proc. Roy. Soc., A, Volume 204, 1950, p. 123, Volume 207, 1951, p. 228 (Part 1: Introduction and classical field dynamics, Part 2: Quantum field dynamics)
• The electromagnetic field in a Lagrangian quantum theory, Philosophical Magazine, Volume 46, 1955, p. 941
• with K. Hain, G. Hain, SJ Roberts, W. Koppendorfer: Fully ionized pinch collapse, Z. f. Naturforschung A, Volume 15, 1960, p. 1093
• with JB Taylor : Magnetohydrodynamic calculations for finite Larmor radius, Phys. Rev. Lett., Vol. 8, 1962, p. 197
• with NO Weiss: Convective difference schemes, Mathematics of Computation, Volume 20, 1966, p. 272
• with HK Berk: Nonlinear evolution of a two-stream instability, Phys. Rev. Lett., Vol. 19, 1967, p. 297
• with HK Berk, CE Nielsen: Phase space hydrodynamics of equivalent nonlinear systems: Experimental and computational observations, Physics of Fluids, Volume 13, 1970, p. 980
• with DE Potter: Magnetohydrodynamic Calculations, in: Methods of Computational Physics, Volume 9, 1970, p. 339
• with HL Berk: The water bag model, in: Methods of Computational Physics, Volume 9, 1970, p. 87
• Computational physics and software engineering, New Sci., Volume 46, 1970, p. 12
• with JP Christiansen: Topics in computational fluid dynamics, Computer Physics Communications, Suppl. 3, 1972, p. 14
• Computers and physics, in: Computers as a language of physics, IAEA, Vienna 1972
• with G. Kuo-Petravic, M. Petravic: Self-consistent solution of an axisymmetric pulsar model, Phys. Rev. Lett., Vol. 32, 1974, p. 1019
• with JP Christiansen: Olympus - a standard control and utility package for initial value Fortran programs, Computer Physics Communications, 7, 1974, 245
• with JP Christiansen, DEFT Ashby: Medua - a one dimensional laser fusion code, Computer Physics Communications, 7, 1974, 271
• with JP Christiansen: Evolution of the reversed field pinch, Nucl. Fusion, Volume 18, 1978, p. 181
• Automation, Unemployment and the Distribution of Income, European Center for Work and Society, Maastricht 1982

literature

• John Killeen: In memoriam Keith V. Roberts, Journal of Computational Physics, Volume 73, 1987, pp. 1-4
• Lorna Arnold , Britain and the H-Bomb, Palgrave, 2001