Kerson Huang

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kerson Huang (born March 15, 1928 in Nanning , China , † September 1, 2016 in Danvers (Massachusetts) ) was a Chinese-born American theoretical physicist.

Huang grew up in Manila . He studied physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he received his bachelor's degree in 1950 and his doctorate in 1953 under Victor Weisskopf . From 1953 to 1955 he was an instructor at MIT. From 1955 to 1957 he was at the Institute for Advanced Study and then Assistant Professor at MIT, where he became an Associate Professor in 1961 and Professor in 1966 and retired in 1999. In 1976 he was accepted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . He has been a member of the Center for Theoretical Physics (CTP) at MIT since its inception in 1968 and also of the Laboratory for Nuclear Science. Most recently he lived in Wakefield (Massachusetts) .

Huang dealt with statistical mechanics (theory of the Bose-Einstein condensates or the Bose gases) and quantum field theory. He is known from various textbooks, especially his textbook on statistical mechanics from the 1960s. In the 2000s he turned to biophysics.

He and Steven Weinberg showed that there is a maximum temperature above which the description of particles of the strong interaction as hadrons collapses. With Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang and with Francis Low he also published important works on weak interaction, especially on the possibility of experimental observation of parity violations.

He also translated Omar Chajjam's Rubayat from Fitzgerald's well-known English translation into Chinese ( Taiwan 1965, 1986) and the I Ching into English (1984, World Scientific, Workman Publishing 1987, with his wife Rosemary Huang).

He was a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Letters . Huang was a Sloan Research Fellow and a Guggenheim Fellow.

Fonts

  • Statistical Mechanics. John Wiley, 1964. 2nd edition 1987, ISBN 0471815187
    • German translation: Statistical Mechanics , 3 volumes, BI university pocket books 1964
  • Introduction to statistical physics. Taylor and Francis, 2001, ISBN 0-7484-0941-6 .
  • Quantum field theory - from operators to path integrals. Wiley, 1998, ISBN 0-471-14120-8 .
  • Quarks, leptons and gauge fields. World Scientific, 1982. 2nd edition 1992, ISBN 981-02-0659-3 .
  • Lectures on Statistical Physics and Protein Folding. World Scientific, 2005.
  • Fundamental Forces of Nature: The Story of Gauge Fields. World Scientific, 2007.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Huang, Kerson
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American physicist and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH March 15, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Nanning
DATE OF DEATH September 1, 2016
Place of death Danvers (Massachusetts)