Rusi P. Taleyarkhan

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rusi P. Taleyarkhan

Rusi P. Taleyarkhan (* 1953 in Dohad ) is an Indian - American physicist at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee USA. His work in the field of nuclear fusion (later also cold fusion ) is controversial.

Live and act

Taleyarkhan comes from a prominent Parish family and grew up in Bombay and the state of Gujarat . He studied mechanical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras with a bachelor's degree, went to the United States in 1977, where he studied nuclear engineering at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute up to a master’s degree and received his doctorate. He and his wife Navaz Rusi have three children together named Pervin , Manaz and Meher .

Taleyarkhan claims in the field of sonoluminescence a vesicle fusion to produce. Taleyarkhan published his research on March 8, 2001 in the issue of Science magazine . This sparked a controversy among researchers internationally, which continues to this day, as his experiment has not yet been reproduced completely independently.

The TV and radio broadcaster BBC carried out the experiment in February 2005 according to Taleyarkhan's exact templates. Nevertheless, no nuclear fusion could be detected. Taleyarkhan claimed that the BBC's experiment was flawed and that the merger could not take place.

Investigating the allegations

The ongoing allegation of scientific misconduct finally prompted the House Committee on Science and Technology of the US House of Representatives to conduct its own investigation in the spring of 2007 , after two internal reviews of the proceedings by commissions from Purdue University in mid-February 2007 in the journal Nature had been criticized as opaque.

In May 2007, an assessment was made by the committee chairman, Brad Miller, describing the university's internal reviews as "not thorough" and not following the normal rules for reviewing possible scientific misconduct. In addition, no attempt has yet been made to check the validity of the experiments ( “never addressed the validity of the underlying research” ). As a result, the university set up a third commission, which was “ familiar with the issues” with members of the two previous commissions of inquiry. This commission charged Taleyarkhan with scientific misconduct in 34 cases. Taleyarkhan was found guilty of two of these allegations in 2008. On the one hand, he named a co-author on one of his publications who had made no relevant contribution to the study; by naming it, Taleyarkhan only wanted to prevent possible criticism that his study was carried out by a single person. On the other hand, the claim in an article published in Physical Review Letters in 2006 that his results have meanwhile been reproduced independently of him; but this statement is wrong.

On August 27, 2008, the leadership of Purdue University revoked his professorship (Arden Bement Jr. Professorship), banned him from training graduate students for at least three years , but continued to grant him membership in his faculty.

The nuclear technology professor Günter Lohnert (University of Stuttgart), editor of the publishing journal, said in an interview that the investigative commission had not commented on the relevant technical issues and only objected to minor issues: “This whole 30, 40 page verdict are only formal matters, not a single one deals with the topic as such. ”However, Lohnert had already distinguished himself early on as a supporter of the cold fusion , which Sonofusion describes as proven and supports Taleyarkhan. That's why he himself came under criticism. In 2009, Lohnert was replaced as the active editor of the publishing journal.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Eugenie Samuel Reich: Disputed inquiry clears bubble-fusion engineer . In: Nature . tape 445 , no. 7129 , 2007, p. 690-691 , doi : 10.1038 / 445690a .
  2. ↑ Süddeutsche Zeitung of March 27, 2007, p. 18
  3. ^ Purdue dogged by misconduct claims. Nature, Vol. 447, No. 7142, May 17, 2007, p. 238
  4. ^ Report of the investigation Committee In the Matter of Dr. Rusi P. Taleyarkhan (Executive Memorandum No. C-22)
  5. ^ The bubble burst. New Scientist from July 26th, 2008, p. 6. The co-author said literally: "The sole apparent motivation for the addition was the desire to overcome a reviewer's criticism that the experiments should not have been carried out by one person."
  6. ↑ Purdue reprimands fusion scientist for misconduct . Purdue News Service. August 27, 2008. Retrieved September 2, 2008.
  7. ↑ Purdue reprimands fusion scientist for misconduct.
  8. ↑ Ralf Krauter in an interview with Professor Günter Lohnert . Deutschlandfunk website . Retrieved July 17, 2011.
  9. ↑ Vial fusion takes another hurdle. Telepolis on July 18, 2005, accessed December 15, 2013
personal data
SURNAME Taleyarkhan, Rusi P.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Indian-American physicist
DATE OF BIRTH 1953
PLACE OF BIRTH Dohad