MHD Memes

Abstract

The celebration of Allan Kaufman's 80th birthday was an occasion to reflect on a career that has stimulated the mutual exchange of ideas (or memes in the terminology of Richard Dawkins) between many researchers. This paper will revisit a meme Allan encountered in his early career in magnetohydrodynamics, the continuation of a magnetohydrodynamic mode through a singularity, and will also mention other problems where Allan's work has had a powerful cross-fertilizing effect in plasma physics and other areas of physics and mathematics.Comment: Submitted for publication in IOP Journal of Physics: Conference Series for publication in "Plasma Theory, Wave Kinetics, and Nonlinear Dynamics", Proceedings of KaufmanFest, 5-7 October 2007, University of California, Berkeley, US