Radu Bălescu

Radu Balescu ( born July 18, 1932 in Bucharest, † June 1, 2006 ) was a Romanian -born Belgian physicist who worked on statistical physics and plasma physics.

Balescu went to Bucharest and from 1948 in Ixelles to school and studied from 1950 at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB ), where he received his doctorate with Ilya Prigogine 1958. He was assistant to Prigogine and from 1964 professor at the ULB. He died during a visit to Bucharest.

Balescu dealt with the statistical physics of charged particles and plasmas with applications to transport theory in magnetically confined plasmas such as the tokamak reactor. He also spent several decades in nuclear fusion research active.

In 1970 he received the Francqui price. In 2000 he received the first Hannes Alfvén Prize of the Division of Plasma Physics European Physical Society. He was a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences and Fine Arts of Belgium and honorary member of the Romanian Academy.

Writings

• Statistical Mechanics of Charged Particles, New York, Interscience, 1963 ( translated into Russian )
• Equilibrium and Non Equilibrium Statistical Mechanics, Wiley, 1975 ( translated into Russian )
• Transport Processes in plasma, 2 volumes, North Holland, 1988 ( translated into Chinese )
• Statistical Dynamics: Matter out of Equilibrium, Imperial College Press 1997