Miklos Porkolab

Miklos Porkolab (born March 24, 1939 in Budapest ) is a Hungarian-American physicist who mainly deals with plasma physics.

Porkolab emigrated from Hungary to Canada in 1957 and studied at the University of British Columbia (bachelor's degree in 1963) and Stanford University , where he received his master's degree in 1964 and his doctorate in applied physics in 1967. He then worked at Princeton University's Plasma Physics Laboratory , from 1968 as a permanent member and from 1975 as Senior Research Physicist. In 1977 he became a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , where he has been director of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) since 1995.

In 2013 Porkolab was awarded the Hannes Alfvén Prize . In 2009 he received the James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics for fundamental research on linear and nonlinear plasma waves and the interaction of particles and plasma waves, development of plasma heating and current excitation in plasmas, and diagnostics of plasmas

In 2007 he received the Karoly Simony plaque from the Hungarian Society for Nuclear Physics. From 2001 to 2006 he was chairman of Fusion Power Associates. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (1976), whose Prize for Excellence in Plasma Physics he received in 1984 and whose Department of Plasma Physics he headed in 1999, and a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science . In 1976 he received the Humboldt Prize. From 1991 to 2001 he was co-editor of Physics Letters A.

Web links

• Homepage at MIT
• Biography at the APS
• Maxwell Prize for Porkolab
• Simony Medal for Porkolab

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Laudation: For pioneering investigations of linear and nonlinear plasma waves and wave-particle interactions; fundamental contributions to the development of plasma heating, current drive and diagnostics; and leadership in promoting plasma science education and domestic and international collaborations.