Ronald C. Davidson

Ronald C. Davidson ( born July 3, 1941 in Norwich ( Ontario ), Canada ) is a Canadian physicist who deals with plasma physics.

Davidson studied at McMaster University ( Bachelor's degree 1963) and a doctorate in 1966 from Princeton University. As a post-doc, he was from 1966 to 1968 at the University of California, Berkeley, and from 1968 Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland. He became Associate Professor in 1972 and Professor in 1973. From 1978 he was a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Plasma Fusion Center, whose director he was from 1978 to 1988. Since 1991 he is a professor of astrophysics at Princeton University and from 1991 to 1996 director of the Plasma Physics Laboratory. 1982 to 1986 he was Director of the Magnetic Fusion Advisory Committee of the U.S. Department of Energy ( DOE) and from 1982 to 1983 Head of the Department Plasma Physics of the American Physical Society.

In 2008 he received the James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics for fundamental contributions to the physics of non- neutral plasmas, particle beams of high intensity and collective nonlinear interaction processes in plasmas at high temperature .. He is the author and co- author of over 350 scientific journal publications. In particular, he focused on non-neutral plasmas ( ie the total charge does not vanish ), such as occur in particle beams in high- energy scattering experiments in elementary particle physics.

He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1986, he received the Leadership Award from Fusion Power Associates and IEEE Particle Accelerator 2005 Science and Technology Award.

Writings

  • With Hong Quin: Physics of intense charged particle beams in high energy accelerators, Imperial College Press, London, 2001
  • Physics of non neutral plasmas, World Scientific 2001
  • An introduction to the physics of nonneutral plasmas, Addison -Wesley 1990
  • Theory of nonneutral plasmas, Benjamin 1974
  • Methods in nonlinear plasma theory, Academic Press 1972
University System of Maryland
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