Jump to content

Richard V. E. Lovelace

Add links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Richard V. E. Lovelace
Lovelace in 2004
Alma materWashington University in St. Louis, Cornell University
Known forDiscovery of the period of the pulsar in the Crab Nebula (Crab pulsar)
ChildrenTwo
Scientific career
InstitutionsCornell University
Thesis Theory and analysis of interplanetary scintillations

Richard Van Evera Lovelace is an American astrophysicist and plasma physicist. He is best known for the discovery of the period of the pulsar in the Crab Nebula (Crab pulsar), which helped to prove that pulsars are rotating neutron stars, for developing a magnetic model of astrophysical jets from galaxies, and for developing a model of Rossby waves in accretion disks. He organized a US-Russia collaboration in plasma astrophysics, which focused on modeling of plasma accretion and outflows from magnetized rotating stars.

Early life and education

[edit]

Lovelace is the son of city planner Eldridge Lovelace and Marjorie Van Evera Lovelace.[1][2] He graduated from Washington University in St. Louis in 1964 with a BS in physics and after receiving a National Science Foundation fellowship earned his PhD from Cornell University in 1970, also in physics,[3] with a dissertation titled Theory and analysis of interplanetary scintillations.[4]

Career

[edit]

Lovelace began his career as a research associate at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and the Cornell University Laboratory of Plasma Studies. In 1972 he became an assistant professor at Cornell, and in 1984 a full professor. He spent a year as a visiting scientist at the Princeton University Plasma Physics Laboratory in the 1970s and in 1990 was a visiting professor at the University of Texas at Austin on a Guggenheim Fellowship.[5] He was elected an overseas fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge University, and visiting scientist at the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge, and in 1999 was Orsan Anderson Visiting Scholar at Los Alamos National Laboratory.[6] He has a joint appointment at Cornell in the Astronomy and Applied Engineering Physics departments, and directed the Master of Engineering Program from 1991 to 2000.[citation needed] He was awarded the Excellence in Teaching Prize of the engineering honor society Tau Beta Pi in 1988.[citation needed]

He became a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2000, was divisional associate editor for Physical Review Letters for Plasma Physics from 1997 to 2000, in 2003 became associate editor of Physics of Plasmas,[6] and in 2010 became an editorial board member of Journal of Computational Astrophysics and Cosmology.[7] He was a member of the James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics committee of the American Physical Society in 2009-2011 and a member of the Advisory board of the Guggenheim Fellowship Foundation from 1994 to 2005.[3]

Research

[edit]

In 1968, Lovelace and his collaborators discovered a rapidly pulsing radio source, the Crab Pulsar, measuring its period to be approximately 33 milliseconds.[8] As a graduate student working at Arecibo Observatory, Lovelace developed a version of the Fast Fourier transform program [9] which was adapted to run on the Arecibo Observatory's CDC 3200 computer. [10] This program helped to separate the periodic pulsar signal from the noise, and one night he discovered the period of the Crab pulsar.[11] A few weeks earlier, observers from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory reported about two pulsating sources near the Crab Nebula, with no evident periodicities.[12][13] Lovelace and collaborators found that one of pulsars (the NP 0532) is located in the center of the Crab Nebula and found its period with a high precision: 33.09 ms.[11]

This was the fastest pulsar found at that time.[8][14] This discovery helped to prove the idea that pulsars were rotating neutron stars.[15][16] Before that, many scientists believed that pulsars were pulsating white dwarfs or neutron stars.[16][17]

In 1976 Lovelace proposed a model of jets from magnetized disks surrounding massive black holes in galaxies.[18][19] The model is based on the dynamo mechanism acting in the magnetized accretion disk surrounding a black hole or other gravitating object. The idea of the magnetically-driven jets and winds has been cited by the astronomical community.[20][21][22]

He also developed the theory of scintillations in the interstellar medium[23] and discovered the Kolmogorov nature of the turbulence in the solar wind.[24]

Lovelace proposed the Rossby wave instability in accretion disks [25] These waves form anti-cyclonic vortices in accretion discs, where dust particles accumulate and may form planets.[26][27] He developed a theory of the stability of electron and ion rings which has been used in plasma fusion experiments at Cornell.[28]

Lovelace also has significant contributions to plasma physics. He developed the theory of the stability of electron and ion rings.[29] Lovelace developed a pioneering theory of intense ion beams in pulsed diodes, which are currently used in laboratories.[30] He also proposed the theory of magnetic insulation, which is used in laboratories.[31] Lovelace invented a trapping mechanism of spin-polarized neutral gas, which has been experimentally demonstrated.[32][33]

Personal life

[edit]

As of 2008 Lovelace was married; he has two daughters(Jennifer & Evera) .[1] He lives in Ithaca, New York.[34]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ a b Eldridge Lovelace obituary, Kansas City Star, November 27, 2008.
  2. ^ "Dr. Virginia Utermohlen Married", New York Times, December 23, 1972.
  3. ^ a b "Richard V E Lovelace", College of Engineering, Cornell University, retrieved January 2, 2021.
  4. ^ Richard Van Evera Lovelace, "Theory and analysis of interplanetary scintillations", PhD, Cornell University, 1970, OCLC 1055559284.
  5. ^ "John Simon Guggenheim Foundation | Richard V. E. Lovelace". Retrieved 2021-01-07.
  6. ^ a b "Richard V.E. Lovelace", Department of Astronomy, College of Arts and Sciences, Cornell University, retrieved January 2, 2021.
  7. ^ Editorial Board of the "Journal of Computational Astrophysics and Cosmology"
  8. ^ a b "Out of the zenith. Jodrell Bank 1957-1970" Sir. Bernard Lovell 1973, London: Oxford University Press, pp 1-255 (see page159).
  9. ^ "Gauss and the history of the fast Fourier transform" Heideman, Michael T., Johnson, Don H., Burrus, Charles Sidney 1984. (PDF). IEEE ASSP Magazine. 1 (4): 14–21.
  10. ^ "On the Discovery of the Period of the Crab Nebula Pulsar" Cornell University
  11. ^ a b "Astrophysical formulae. space, time, matter and cosmology" Kenneth R. Lang 2014, Publisher: Springer Berlin Heidelberg
  12. ^ "Pulsating radio sources near Crab Nebula" Howard, W. E., Staelin, D. H., Reifenstein, E. C. 1968, IAU Circ., No. 2110, #2
  13. ^ "Pulsating radio sources near the crab nebula" Staelin, David H. and Reifenstein, Edward C., III, December 1968, Science, Volume 162, Issue 3861, pp. 1481-1483
  14. ^ Haensel, Paweł. (2007). Neutron stars. 1, Equation of state and structure. Potekhin, A. Y., Yakovlev, D. G. New York: Springer. ISBN 978-0-387-47301-7. OCLC 232363234.
  15. ^ "Rotating neutron stars as the origin of the pulsating radio sources" T. Gold 1968, Nature, Volume 218, Issue 5143, pp. 731-732
  16. ^ a b "Recent observations of pulsars support the rotating neutron star hypothesis." T. Gold, 1969, Nature, Volume 221, Issue 5175, pp. 25-27.
  17. ^ “Observations of a rapidly pulsating radio source” A. Hewish, S. J. Bell, J. D. H. Pilkington, P. F. Scott and R. A. Collins 1968, Nature, 217, 709-713.
  18. ^ "Dynamo model of double radio sources" R. V. E. Lovelace 1976, Nature 262 (5570), 649-652.
  19. ^ “Accretion disc electrodynamics - a model for double radio sources” Blandford, R. 1976, MNRAS, 176, 465-481 (see p. 465)
  20. ^ ``Hydromagnetic flows from accretion discs and the production of radio jets R. D. Blandford, and D. G. Payne 1982, MNRAS, 199, 883-903 (see p. 884)
  21. ^ ``Self-similar models of magnetized accretion disks A. Konigl 1989, Astrophysical Journal, 342, 208-223 (see p. 208)
  22. ^ “Black holes, white dwarfs, and neutron stars: the physics of compact objects” S. L. Shapiro and S. A. Teukolsky 1983, A Wiley-Interscience Publication, New York: Wiley, pp 1-645 (see p. 437)
  23. ^ "Refractive and diffractive scattering in the interstellar medium" J. M. Cordes, A Pidwerbetsky, R. V. E. Lovelace The Astrophysical Journal 310, 737-767
  24. ^ "Analysis of observations of interplanetary scintillations" R. V. E. Lovelace, E. E. Salpeter, L. E. Sharp, & D. E. Harries 1970, ApJ, 159, p. 1047.
  25. ^ "Rossby wave instability of Keplerian accretion disks" R. V. E. Lovelace, H. Li, S. A. Colgate, A. F. Nelson 1999, The Astrophysical Journal 513 (2), 805.
  26. ^ A Major Asymmetric Dust Trap in a Transition Disk N. van der Marel, E. F. van Dishoeck, S. Bruderer, etc. 2013, Science Vol. 340, Issue 6137, pp. 1199-1202
  27. ^ Astrophysics of planet formation P. J. Armitage, Cambridge University Press
  28. ^ "Intense pulsed ion beams for fusion applications" S. Humphries Jr. 1980, Nuclear Fusion 20, 1549-1612, see pp. 1560, 1572, 1589
  29. ^ "Low-frequency stability of Astron configurations" R. V. E. Lovelace 1975, Physical Review Letters 35 (3), 162-164.
  30. ^ "Generation of intense ion beams in pulsed diodes". R. N. Sudan and R. V. Lovelace 1973, Physical Review Letters 31 (19), 1174.
  31. ^ "Theory of magnetic insulation" R. V. Lovelace, E. Ott 1974, The Physics of Fluids 17 (6), 1263-1268.
  32. ^ "Magnetic confinement of a neutral gas" R. V. E. Lovelace, C. Mehanian, T. J. Tommila, D. M. Lee 1985, Nature 318 (6041), 30-36.
  33. ^ "Storage rings for spin polarized hydrogen" D. Thompson, R. V. E. Lovelace, D. M. Lee 1989, Journal of the Optical Society of America, 611.
  34. ^ "Marjorie Remembers" (PDF). 2016-03-03. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2016-03-03. Retrieved 2021-01-19.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Richard_V._E._Lovelace&oldid=1144892320"