Francis F. Chen

Francis F. Chen ( born November 18, 1929 in Canton, China) is a Chinese- burly American physicist who deals with plasma physics.

Chen studied at Harvard University, where he took his bachelor's degree in astronomy in 1950, in 1953 his Master's degree in physics in 1954 and his doctorate was. At that time, he worked on high-energy physics ( proton-proton scattering and proton-nucleus scattering at energies above 1 GeV even then ). From 1954 he worked at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory ( where he initially worked in stellarators ), where he remained until 1969, when he became professor of electrical engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles ( UCLA). Since 1994 he is a professor emeritus. It was 1962/63 visiting scientist at the Nuclear Research Center in Fontenay -aux -Roses, 1977 in Lausanne and in 1985 in Australia and Japan.

Chen was concerned with both basic research in plasma physics and fusion with magnetic confinement and inertial confinement fusion, but also with low energy plasma physics for industrial applications, for example in the semiconductor industry. He works both theoretically and experimentally. Further areas were plasma diagnostics, accelerator concepts with plasmas, helicon plasma sources, instabilities of plasma - laser interaction, Langmuir samples resistive drift waves, anomalous diffusion, Q - machines. He wrote a well-known in the U.S. plasma physics textbook.

Since 1968 he is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS ), the James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics, he received in 1995. In 1983 he was chairman of the Section of the APS Plasma Physics. Since 1980 he is a Fellow of the IEEE, the Plasma Physics and Applications Award he received in 1994.

Writings

• Introduction to Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion, 2nd Edition, Plenum Press, New York, 1984
• Jane Chang Lecture Notes on Principles of Plasma Processing, Springer 2003