The education of Walter Kohn and the creation of density functional theory

The theoretical solid-state physicist Walter Kohn was awarded one-half of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his mid-1960's creation of an approach to the many-particle problem in quantum mechanics called density functional theory (DFT). In its exact form, DFT establishes that the total charge density of any system of electrons and nuclei provides all the information needed for a complete description of that system. This was a breakthrough for the study of atoms, molecules, gases, liquids, and solids. Before DFT, it was thought that only the vastly more complicated many-electron wave function was needed for a complete description of such systems. Today, fifty years after its introduction, DFT (in one of its approximate forms) is the method of choice used by most scientists to calculate the physical properties of materials of all kinds. In this paper, I present a biographical essay of Kohn's educational experiences and professional career up to and including the creation of DFT

Interfaces, modularity and ecosystem emergence: How DARPA modularized the semiconductor ecosystem

Scholars have identified the pivotal role that modularity plays in promoting innovation. Modularity affects industry structure by breaking up the value chain along technical interfaces, thereby allowing new entrants to specialize and innovate. Less well-understood is where modularity comes from. Firms seem to behave consistently with the theory in some settings, especially the information technology sector, but not in others, such as automobiles. Here we show how the government has a role to play in generating open interfaces needed for modularity, utilizing a case study of the semiconductor industry from 1970 to 1980. We show how the Defense Department\u27s support for this effort aligned with its mission-based interest in semiconductors. We thus contribute a new source of open standards to the modularity literature, as well as a new analytical perspective to the public research funding literature

AGENDA: Strategies in Western Water Law and Policy: Courts, Coercion and Collaboration

1 v. (various pagings) : ill., maps, charts ; 29 cm Conference organizers, session moderators and/or speakers included University of Colorado School of Law professors Gary C. Bryner, James N. Corbridge, Jr., David H. Getches, Douglas S. Kenney, Lawrence J. MacDonnell, Kathryn M. Mutz and Charles F. Wilkinson Includes bibliographical references The event will examine the principal problem-solving strategies in western water law and policy: courts, coercion and collaboration. In addressing this broad range of strategies, the program will focus on national, west-wide and Colorado-specific issues. Conference activities will commence with a free public program cosponsored by the Center of the American West, examining the Western Water Policy Review Advisory Commission’s controversial report, Water in the West: Challenge for the Next Century. Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt has agreed to be the featured speaker at this forum

AGENDA: Strategies in Western Water Law and Policy: Courts, Coercion and Collaboration

1 v. (various pagings) : ill., maps, charts ; 29 cm Conference organizers, session moderators and/or speakers included University of Colorado School of Law professors Gary C. Bryner, James N. Corbridge, Jr., David H. Getches, Douglas S. Kenney, Lawrence J. MacDonnell, Kathryn M. Mutz and Charles F. Wilkinson Includes bibliographical references The event will examine the principal problem-solving strategies in western water law and policy: courts, coercion and collaboration. In addressing this broad range of strategies, the program will focus on national, west-wide and Colorado-specific issues. Conference activities will commence with a free public program cosponsored by the Center of the American West, examining the Western Water Policy Review Advisory Commission’s controversial report, Water in the West: Challenge for the Next Century. Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt has agreed to be the featured speaker at this forum

Michael John Robert Fasham. 29 May 1942 — 7 June 2008

Professor Michael Fasham played a pioneering role in the development of marine ecosystem models for the study of nutrient and carbon cycling in the ocean. He is articularly celebrated for his famous Fasham–Ducklow–McKelvie model, which was the first of its kind to separate new and regenerated forms of nutrient, as well as including microbial recycling pathways. Fasham’s models provided key understanding of the links between primary production, carbon cycling and export (of organic matter from the surface to deep ocean) based on both deep and insightful parameterization inspired by his many collaborations with leading experimental and field biologists of the day, and by his expert use of data for model calibration and validation. He had the ability to see the big picture, linking observation and models to achieve a unified understanding of system dynamics. As well as the direct contributions of his own science, Fasham played a pivotal role in steering the international scientific agenda, notably his leadership of the Joint Global Ocean Flux Study which had the aim of understanding ocean carbon cycling and sinks via the coordination of extensive field programmes, synthesis and modelling. He will be remembered by those who knew him for his openness, enthusiasm and modesty, a man who was fun to know and to work with and who loved the thrill of scientific adventure and discovery

Window: The Magazine of Western Washington University, 2017, Volume 10, Issue 01

https://cedar.wwu.edu/window_magazine/1018/thumbnail.jp

The Revolution Will Be Videotaped: Making a Technology of Consciousness in the Long 1960s

In the late 1960s, video recorders became portable, leaving the television studio for the art gallery, the psychiatric hospital, and the streets. The technology of recording moving images on magnetic tape, previously of use only to broadcasters, became a tool for artistic expression, psychological experimentation, and political revolution. Video became portable not only materially but also culturally; it could be carried by an individual, but it could also be carried into institutions from the RAND Corporation to the Black Panther Party, from psychiatrists’ offices to art galleries, and from prisons to state-funded media access centers. Between 1967 and 1973, American videographers across many of these institutional contexts participated in a common discourse, sharing not only practical knowledge about the uses and maintenance of video equipment, but visions of its social significance, psychological effects, and utopian future. For many, video was a technology which would bring about a new kind of awareness, the communal consiousness that—influenced by the evolutionary philosophy of Henri Bergson—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin referred to as the noosphere and Marshall McLuhan as the global village. Experimental videographers across several fields were also influenced by the psychedelic research of the 1950s and early 1960s, by the development of cybernetics as a science of both social systems and interactions between humans and machines, by anthropology and humanistic psychology, and by revolutionary political movements in the United States and around the world

A stellar view of the Sun

This invited memoir looks back on my scientific career that straddles the solar and stellar branches of astrophysics, with sprinklings of historical context and personal opinion. Except for a description of my life up to my Ph.D. phase, the structure is thematic rather than purely chronological, focusing on those topics that I worked on throughout substantial parts of my life: stars like the Sun and the Sun-as-a-star, surface field evolution, coronal structure and dynamics, heliophysics education, and space weather. Luck and a broadly inquisitive frame of mind shaped a fortunate life on two continents, taking me from one amazing mentor, colleague, and friend to another, working in stimulating settings to interpret data from state-of-the-art space observatories.Comment: Invited memoir, accepted for publication in Solar Physic