Madan Lal Mehta

Madan Lal Mehta ( born December 24, 1932 in Relmagra, Udaipur; † 10 December 2006 Udaipur ) was an Indian theoretical physicist, known for his work on random matrices.

Mehta studied at the University of Rajasthan ( Jaipur ) with a Master 's degree in mathematics in 1956, spent two years at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, and then at the nuclear research center in Saclay, where he in 1961 with Claude Bloch at the University of Paris in theoretical nuclear physics received his doctorate ( on nuclear matter low density ). 1962/63 he was invited by Eugene Wigner (because of his work on random matrices ) at the Institute for Advanced Study, then at the University of Delhi and 1966/67, at Princeton University and Argonne National Laboratory. In 1967 he returned to Saclay, where he (later as Director of Research ) was a French citizen in 1970 and 1971 conducted research for the CNRS. In 2005 he returned to India.

He has published, among others, Freeman Dyson ( with whom he started his time at IAS 1962/63 worked ) and Michel Gaudin, with whom he developed the method of orthogonal polynomials in 1960 in the theory of random matrices. That was the real beginning of the mathematical research on random matrices, the Eugene Wigner in 1951 introduced in theoretical physics, as he suspected that the resonance spectra of heavy nuclei would be distributed as eigenvalues ​​of random matrices. His book on random matrices has long been regarded as a standard work.

In addition to English and French, he spoke Russian, Japanese and Chinese ( he was a visiting scientist in Mexico, Australia, Japan and China).

Writings

  • Mehta On the statistical properties of the level spacings in nuclear spectra, Nuclear Physics, Volume 18, 1960, pp. 395-419
  • Mehta, Gaudin On the density of Eigenvalues ​​of a random matrix, Nuclear Physics, Volume 18, 1960, pp. 420-427
  • ML Mehta, Random Matrices, Elsevier, 3rd edition 2004 First, as Random matrices and the statistical theory of energy levels, Academic press 1967, 2nd edition 1991
December 10 Integrated Authority File
537008
de