Nicholas Metropolis

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Nicholas Metropolis

Nicholas Constantine Metropolis (born June 11, 1915 in Chicago , † October 17, 1999 in Los Alamos , New Mexico ) was an American theoretical physicist, computer scientist and mathematician and co-inventor of the Monte Carlo method .

life and work

Metropolis' security ID photo from Los Alamos National Laboratory at the time of World War II

Metropolis had Greek ancestors, grew up in Chicago and studied physics at the University of Chicago , where he received his bachelor's degree in 1937 and his doctorate in 1941 . During the Second World War he worked in Enrico Fermi's team in Chicago on the construction of the first nuclear reactor and from April 1943 on the Manhattan project in Los Alamos . There he developed equations of state for matter under extreme conditions, which was important for nuclear weapon simulation. At the same time he worked a lot with Richard Feynman , who organized the computer group (at that time mostly women working on desktop calculators ) and with whom, as he later recalled, he spent at least as much time repairing the electromechanical desktop calculators . After the war he was an assistant professor at the University of Chicago and from 1948 headed a group in Los Alamos, the MANIAC I ("Mathematical and Numerical Integrator and Computer", March 15, 1952 in operation) and II (1957 in operation) computers developed some of the earliest computers based on the Von Neumann architecture . 1957 to 1965 he was professor of physics in Chicago and founder of the "Institute for Computer Research" there. From 1965 he was back at Los Alamos National Laboratory , from 1980 as a Senior Fellow. In 1987 he received the title of emeritus from the University of California as the first member of the laboratory.

In Los Alamos, Metropolis invented the Monte Carlo method with Stanisław Marcin Ulam in 1949 (a team he led made the first calculations with it in 1948 at ENIAC , as part of the nuclear weapons program) and numerically calculated the equations of state for matter under extreme conditions with Edward Teller and others Conditions. In doing so, they also developed a forerunner of the later simulated annealing algorithm, and as part of this work, the Monte Carlo method was first published in 1953. A variant of the Monte Carlo method is also called the Metropolis algorithm.

Metropolis was a member of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics , the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and received the Pioneer Medal from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers .

Web links

References

  1. ^ Obituary in New York Times October 23, 1999
  2. ^ Metropolis: Origin of the Monte Carlo Method . Los Alamos Science, PDF file , the name of the method comes from Metropolis
  3. ^ Metropolis, A. Rosenbluth, Marshall Rosenbluth , A. Teller and Edward Teller: Equation of state calculation by fast computing machines . In: Journal of Chemical Physics . Volume 21, 1953, pp. 1087-1092
personal data
SURNAME Metropolis, Nicholas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Metropolis, Nicholas C .; Metropolis, Nicholas Constantine (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American physicist and computer scientist
DATE OF BIRTH June 11, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Chicago
DATE OF DEATH October 17, 1999
Place of death Los Alamos , New Mexico