W. David Arnett

William David Arnett

William David Arnett (* 1940 ), called David Arnett, is an American theoretical astrophysicist .

Arnett studied physics at the University of Kentucky ( Bachelor 1961) and received his PhD in 1965 with Alastair GW Cameron at Yale University . In 1965 he was at the Goddard Institute of Space Studies and from 1967 to 1969 he was with William A. Fowler at Caltech before becoming an assistant professor at Rice University in 1969 . In 1971 he became Associate Professor at the University of Texas at Austin and in 1975 Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign . In 1977 he became a professor at the Enrico Fermi Institute at the University of Chicago , where he stayed until 1989. From 1988 he was Regents Professor at the Steward Observatory of the University of Arizona . From 2007 he was also Chandrasekhar Professor at the International Center for Relativistic Astrophysics (ICRA) in Rome - Pescara - Nice .

Arnett was a pioneer in the hydrodynamic simulation (with radiation coupling and transport) of gravitational collapse, for example in the formation of neutron stars and black holes and in supernovae . In doing so, he made predictions about the resulting element frequencies and the course of the light curves , predicting new types in 1977 (Ib and Ic). He also studied stellar models and computer modeling of turbulent fluids and related convection in stars.

He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Physical Society , the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Astronomical Society . In 1970 he became a Sloan Research Fellow . In 1980 he received the Distinguished Graduate Award from Yale University with JW Truran and in 1981 the US Senior Scientist Humboldt Award. In 2008 he was Chandrasekhar Lecturer at the Bose Center in Kolkata . In 2009 he received the Hans A. Bethe Prize . In 2012 he was awarded the Henry Norris Russell Lectureship and the Marcel Grossmann Award .

Fonts

• Supernovae and Nucleosynthesis. An Investigation of the History of Matter, from the Big Bang to the present. Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ et al. 1996, ISBN 0-691-01148-6 .
• as editor with James W. Truran: Nucleosynthesis. Challenges and new developments. University of Chicago Press, Chicago IL et al. 1985, ISBN 0-226-02787-2 .
• as editor with David Schramm : Explosive Nucleosynthesis. Proceedings of the Conference on Explosive Nucleosynthesis. Held in Austin, Tex., Apr. 2-3, 1973. University of Texas Press, Austin TX et al. 1973.

Web links

• Homepage
• Laudation for Bethe Price