Fluid dynamics

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Interview with Elaine Oran, Professor of Aerospace Engineering and O’Donnell Foundation Chair at Texas A&M. Oran describes her core interest in fluid dynamics and why aerospace engineering provides an ideal home department for her research. She recounts her childhood in Philadelphia, her early interests in science, and her undergraduate experience at Bryn Mawr. She explains her decision to attend Yale for her graduate work in physics, where she focused on phase transitions, and she explains the opportunities that led to her work at the Naval Research Laboratory. Oran describes her research in laser-matter interactions and the value of the Laboratory for Computational Physics. She discusses her early interests in reactive flows and how this field became broadly applicable across the sciences. Oran describes being in Washington on 9/11 and her involvement in studying the explosions. She discusses her decision to join the faculty at the University of Maryland and her research in fire whirls and she explains her subsequent move to A&M where she was attracted by the interdisciplinary research opportunities. Oran describes her work in numerical simulations and the interplay between theory and experiment in her research. At the end of the interview, Oran emphasizes the importance of spontaneity and an openness to pursue science in unexpected directions.

Interview with John Hawley, John D. Hamilton Professor of Astronomy, and Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia. Hawley discusses his responsibilities as Associate Dean and he conveys his ongoing interest in black hole observational work and in the future findings of the James Webb Telescope. He reflects on his career’s overlap with the rise of computational astrophysics and he explains why he is agnostic on the hypothetical value of quantum computing to the field. He recounts his childhood in Maryland, then Kansas, and then northern California, in support of his father’s work as a minister, and he describes his undergraduate education at Haverford where he developed his interest in astronomy. Hawley explains his decision to work with Larry Smarr as his advisor at the University of Illinois, and he describes the origins of the Supercomputing Center. He describes the opportunities that led to him to Caltech to work with Roger Blandford, who was working on jets and active galaxies, and where he pursued synergies between analytic and computational analyses of black hole research. Hawley emphasizes the proximity to NRAO that influenced his decision to accept an offer from UVA, and he discusses his foundational collaboration with Steven Balbus on accretion disks. He explains his motivation to write the textbook Foundations of Modern Cosmology, what it was like to win the Shaw Prize, and how his administrative responsibilities gradually and mostly overtook his research agenda. At the end of the interview, Hawley reflects on the complementary nature of his technical collaboration with Balbus, and why he thinks terms of numerical and analytical approaches as separate endeavors.

This is an interview with Peter Basser, Principal Investigator at NIH and Section Chief of the Laboratory on Quantitative Imaging and Tissue Sciences with the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Basser recounts his childhood in Long Island as the child of Austrian-Jewish immigrants. He describes his undergraduate education at Harvard and how he became interested in biology from a physics perspective. He describes his decision to stay on for graduate research where he worked on fluid dynamics in the lab of Tom McMahon. Basser discusses his postgraduate work on medical devices at Hewlett-Packard, and he describes the opportunities that led to his work at the NIH. He describes the research over the course of his tenure in magnetic stimulation and the flow of currents through nerve membranes. Basser discusses his move to NICHHD and the new opportunities becoming a Principal Investigator offered. He explains his long-range work on tensor imaging and anisotropic diffusion in brain tissue and the growing capacity to image tissue in stroke patients. Basser discusses his work in biomimetics and he explains his dual motivations in furthering both basic science and translational research that has clinical value. He explains the unique collaborative opportunities the NIH affords to work with medical doctors. At the end of the interview, Basser emphasizes the importance of continuum mechanics as a scientific concept that informs all aspects of his work, and he explains why he is excited in the future about new opportunities to study subcellular objects with NMR and other techniques.  

In this interview, David Zierler, Oral Historian for AIP, interviews Thomas C. Blum, Professor of Physics at the University of Connecticut. Blum recounts his childhood in Reno, Nevada and he describes his early interests in math and science. He describes his undergraduate work in aeronautical and astronomical engineering at the University of Washington. Blum discusses his job focusing on computational fluid dynamics at Boeing after college and he explains his decision to pursue a Ph.D. in physics at the University of Arizona. He describes his graduate work in lattice gauge theory studying under Doug Toussaint. Blum discusses his postdoctoral work at Brookhaven, where he continued to work on lattice gauge theory, and he describes his decision to join the faculty at UConn. He describes his ongoing interests in chiral symmetry, g-2 and QCD research, and he conveys his excitement over possible future breakthroughs in hadronic vacuum polarization. At the end of the interview, Blum conveys how much fundamental work remains to be done in physics, and as an example he raises what remains an open-ended question: what is the real structure of the proton?

In this interview, David Zierler, Oral Historian for AIP, interviews Charles Zemach, retired from the staff of the Hydrodynamics Group (T3), Theoretical Physics Division at Los Alamos. Zemach recounts his childhood in Manhattan as the son of Jewish immigrants and his experience at Stuyvesant High School. He describes his undergraduate work at Harvard and the influence he felt from Julian Schwinger and George Mackey, and he explains his decision to remain at Harvard for his Ph.D., which he earned under the direction of Roy Glauber. He describes some of the major questions in theoretical particle physics in the early 1950s and the excitement surrounding quantum electrodynamics, and he explains his research on neutron scattering, which grew out of Fermi’s work on simple delta-function interactions twenty years earlier. Zemach discusses his postdoctoral research at the University of Pennsylvania, and then at Berkeley, where he describes the relevance of his research on the bootstrap theory that Geoffrey Chew was developing. He describes the series of events leading to his work for the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) in Washington, which Sid Drell encouraged him to pursue because it would allow him to participate in some of the great challenges in nuclear arms control during the Nixon administration. He explains how the ACDA was set up to solidify Kissinger’s control of nuclear policy, and he describes his role in the SALT I and SALT II negotiations. Zemach discusses his subsequent work at Los Alamos, where Harold Agnew recruited him to become leader of the Theoretical Division and where he focused on fluid dynamics as it related to nuclear bomb design. At the end of the interview, Zemach discusses some of his activities in physics since his retirement in 1993, including his ongoing interest in fluid dynamics and his work on river rights in the Santa Fe area.

Varghese Mathai, a faculty member in the Department of Physics at the University of Massachusetts, is interviewed by David Zierler. He discusses his reliance on simulated experiments during the pandemic and the value of this for fluid dynamics generally. Mathai recounts his childhood in Kerala, India, and how his interest in how things flow led to his academic specialty. He describes his undergraduate and master’s work in Mechanical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Science before working at General Electric in the Aircraft Engines Division. Mathai discusses his thesis research at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, where he studied buoyant particles in turbulent flow under Detlef Lohse and Chao Sun. He explains his decision to take a postdoctoral position at Brown University where there was a group focused on soft materials and flows with bio-inspired applications. Mathai describes the opportunities leading to his faculty appointment at UMass-Amherst and his interest in setting up a lab in the middle of a pandemic with clear opportunities to study Covid transmission as a fluid dynamics problem. He explains why the CDC guidance should have taken into greater account the expertise of fluid dynamicists and the protections (and limitations) that masks offer in stopping the spread. Mathai emphasizes the importance of visualization aids so the public can better understand the science of airborne transmission. At the end of the discussion, Mathai explains why, even after the pandemic, he will remain interested in collaborating with biologists to advance human health from the vantage point of fluid dynamics.

In this interview, Akio Arakawa discusses topics such as: University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA); meteorology; his family and education; University of Tokyo; Japan Meteorological Agency; Hidetoshi Arakawa; fluid dynamics and thermodynamics; Michael Schlesinger; weather prediction; FORTRAN; UNIVAC; Yale Mintz; Chuck Leith; Mark Rhodes; Joseph Smagorinsky; Jule Charney; John Von Neumann; Syukuro Manabe; Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL); International Business Machines Corporation (IBM); Pierre Morel; David Randall; climate models; National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA); Milton Halem; Jim Hansen; United States Department of Transportation (DOT); Rand Corporation; Max Suarez; National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR); National Science Foundation (NSF); Thomas Rosmond; National Academy of Sciences; carbon dioxide.

In this interview, Akio Arakawa discusses topics such as: University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA); meteorology; his family and education; University of Tokyo; Japan Meteorological Agency; Hidetoshi Arakawa; fluid dynamics and thermodynamics; Michael Schlesinger; weather prediction; FORTRAN; UNIVAC; Yale Mintz; Chuck Leith; Mark Rhodes; Joseph Smagorinsky; Jule Charney; John Von Neumann; Syukuro Manabe; Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL); International Business Machines Corporation (IBM); Pierre Morel; David Randall; climate models; National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA); Milton Halem; Jim Hansen; United States Department of Transportation (DOT); Rand Corporation; Max Suarez; National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR); National Science Foundation (NSF); Thomas Rosmond; National Academy of Sciences; carbon dioxide.