Asım Orhan Barut

Asim Orhan Barut, AO Barut usually quoted ( born June 6, 1926 in Malatya, Turkey, † December 5, 1994 in Boulder, Colorado ) was a Turkish -born American theoretical physicist

Barut studied physics at the ETH Zurich with a diploma degree in 1949 and his doctorate in 1952 ( Electron-optical and statistical behavior of Gittervervielfacher ). He began as an experimental physicist, but then turned to theoretical physics. As a post - graduate student, he was 1953/54, at the University of Chicago. In 1954, he was Assistant Professor at Reed College, and in 1956 at Syracuse University. From 1962 he was professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder, where he. Emeritus until 1994 1970 to 1972 he was Co-Director of the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Boulder and he was Distinguished Research Lecturer of the University. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Munich, at the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Munich, in Ankara, Warsaw, Stockholm, Caracas, Edinburgh. He died of a heart attack.

Barut had a broad field of interest and dealt with classical field theory, quantum optics, S- matrix theory, quantum electrodynamics and quantum mechanics with special emphasis on group theoretical methods and basic questions. He was also unorthodox ways, for example by pursuing an approach to quantum electrodynamics without second quantization of the electromagnetic field or a theory of hadrons as bound states of leptons via short-range magnetic resonances.

Barut authored over 500 scientific articles, wrote six books and gave out 25 more (many emerged from the he led Boulder Summer School on Theoretical Physics and the NATO Advanced Study Institute ). In 1991 he received the Age of Science Award of the Turkish Minister of Culture and in 1982 the Medal of Science from the Turkish government. He also had an honorary doctorate in Turkey ( 1987).

With Abdus Salam, he was a founder of the International Center for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, where he was a frequent guest. Also in Edirne in Turkey, he founded a center for theoretical physics, he wanted to expand shortly before his death to a similar center like in Trieste. He was co-editor of Foundations of Physics.

He was married to Pierette Gervaz since 1954 and had two daughters and a son. In 1962 he became a U.S. citizen.

He was editor of Collected works of Alfred Landé and EU Condon.

Writings

• Electrodynamics and classical theory of fields and particles, Macmillan 1964 Reprint: Dover 1980
• With Ryszard Raczka Theory of group representations and its applications, Polish Scientific Publishers, 1977, 2nd edition World Scientific 1986
• With R. Raczka On noncompact groups I. Classification of non compact real simple Lie groups and groups Containing the Lorentz group, Proc. Roy. Soc. A, Volume 287, 1965, pp. 519-531
• Theory of the Scattering Matrix for the Interaction of Fundamental Particles, New York, MacMillan 1967 German translation: theory of the scattering matrix, BI university paperback, 2 volumes 1967