Stirling Colgate

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Stirling Colgate (2001)

Stirling Auchincloss Colgate (born November 14, 1925 in New York City , † December 1, 2013 in Los Alamos , New Mexico ) was an American physicist who worked in nuclear weapons research and astrophysics .

Life

Colgate went to school in Los Alamos, New Mexico. When this was closed by the beginning of the Manhattan Project in 1942, Colgate and his classmates received their degrees early. He studied electrical engineering at Cornell University and served in the merchant navy during World War II . In 1946, he continued his studies at Cornell University, where he received his bachelor's degree in 1948 and his doctorate in nuclear physics in 1952 . After a post-doctoral period at the University of California, Berkeley , he went to the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in 1952 , where he worked with Edward Teller on the development of the hydrogen bomb . Among other things, he measured the fallout of the hydrogen bomb explosions and made numerical calculations. He also examined the effects of explosions in space, which gave him contacts to astrophysics. In the mid-1960s, he applied the numerical techniques for hydrodynamic simulations developed at the laboratory with Richard H. White (* 1934) to the study of supernovae , funded by Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar . Previous calculations did not lead to an explosion; the shock wave of the matter collapsing on the neutron star's core was not enough to tear the star apart. Colgate and White recognized the importance of the neutrinos produced in large numbers during the formation of the neutron star, in order to transfer energies from the shock wave to the outside and thus trigger the explosion. Your essay was a first breakthrough, but many unanswered questions remained, and since Colgate and White's scenario did not ultimately result in a star explosion, it has been abandoned in the meantime. The calculations have since been refined and expanded significantly and the original idea by Colgate and White has been confirmed.

According to Colgate, the motivation for their supernova calculations were also the negotiations on a test ban agreement with the Russians in Geneva in 1959, in which Colgate was involved, and in which he objected to satellite monitoring that even the flashing of supernovae could be mistaken for nuclear weapon tests. The first gamma ray bursts were later discovered by such observation satellites . In 1960, Colgate discussed with Montgomery Johnson the question of whether supernovae could be considered as sources of high-energy cosmic rays. In 1962 he became a Fellow of the American Physical Society .

From the mid-1960s to around 1973 he was President of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro and later Professor Emeritus there . From 1976 he was also at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the theory department. From 1980 he headed the group for theoretical astrophysics. In 1983 he was a co-founder of the Santa Fe Institute .

In addition to the research interests already mentioned, he also dealt with inertial fusion , plasma physics , models of the AIDS epidemic, physics of the atmosphere (where he examined the interior of tornadoes with small rockets in 1982 ), geotectonics .

In 2006 he received the Los Alamos National Laboratory Medal. Its combination of work on nuclear weapons and at the same time basic research in astrophysics and inertial fusion was particularly emphasized by the laboratory, also as an incentive to recruit capable physicists for nuclear weapons research. In 1990 he received the Bruno Rossi Prize . Since 1984 he was a member of the National Academy of Sciences .

As a demonstration of the propagation of shock waves in a supernova, he invented the toy astro-blaster .

He had been married since 1947 and had three children.

Web links

References

  1. American Men and Women of Science , Thomson Gale 2004
  2. Obituary
  3. ^ Colgate, R. White: The hydrodynamic behavior of supernova explosions. In: Astrophys. Journal. Volume 143, 1966, pp. 626-681
  4. Another major advance was achieved by B. James Ricker Wilson in the early 1980s
  5. Colgate 1981 on his 1966 article on supernovae simulations, PDF file
  6. ^ Colgate, M. Johnson: Hydrodynamic Origin of Cosmic Rays. In: Physical Review Letters. Volume 5, 1960, pp. 235-238
  7. Timothy Samaras: A historical perspective of in-situ observations within Tornado cores . PDF file
  8. Description of the Astro-Blaster ( Memento of the original from September 25, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.hund-hersbruck.de