Richard Allan Ferrell Explained

Richard Allan Ferrell
Birth Date:28 April 1926
Birth Place:Santa Ana, California
Death Place:University Park, Maryland
Nationality:American
Field:Physics
Work Institution:University of Maryland
Alma Mater:California Institute of Technology
Princeton University
Doctoral Advisor:Arthur Wightman
Thesis Title:The Fine Structure of Positronium[1]
Thesis Year:1952
Doctoral Students:Peter Fulde
Alan Harold Luther
John J. Quinn
Known For:Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) phase[2]

Richard Allan Ferrell (1926–2005) was an American theoretical physicist, specializing in condensed matter physics and statistical physics.[3]

Biography

Richard A. Ferrell grew up in Orange County, California. During WW II he served in the U. S. Navy.[4] His mother, Elsie Hopper Ferrell (1906–1995), graduated in 1949 with an M.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine.[5] He graduated from the California Institute of Technology with a B.S. in 1948[6] and an M.S. in 1949.[7] He matriculated in 1949 at Princeton University as a graduate student with fellowship granted by the Atomic Energy Commission and in 1951 won the $1000 top prize in an essay contest sponsored by the Gravity Research Foundation.[8] He married Miriam Laura Conover in 1951.[9] In 1952 he received his Ph.D. from Princeton University.[10] As a postdoc he spent the academic year 1952–1953 under the supervision of Werner Heisenberg at the Max Planck Institute for Physics (which at that time was located in Göttingen). At the invitation of John S. Toll, Ferrell joined in 1953 the faculty of the University of Maryland, where he was promoted to full professor in 1959[4] and retired as professor emeritus in 1993. He was the author or co-author of more than 150 scientific articles and could write in French, German, and Russian.[11] His 1960 article Electron-nucleus hyperfine interactions in atoms was mentioned in Robert H. Romer's list of memorable papers published in the American Journal of Physics from the years 1933 to 1990.[12] His sabbatical leaves included visiting positions at the CERN laboratory[13] in Geneva and the Max Planck Institutes in Munich and Stuttgart.[11]

In May 1976 Ferrell with several American colleagues attended a Soviet-American physics symposium and also attended the Sunday Seminar of Mark Azbel and other refuseniks. After returning to the United States, Ferrell and his colleagues published a letter of support for the refuseniks.[14]

He not only planted trees in University Park, Maryland, but also helped to persuade officials to have trees planted along U.S. Route 1 in College Park, Maryland and on the campus of the University of Maryland. Upon his death he was survived by his widow, a daughter, a son, and three grandchildren.[11]

In 2001 the University of Maryland established the Richard A. Ferrell Distinguished Faculty Fellowship.[15]

Ferrell-Glover-Tinkham sum rule

The Ferrell-Glover-Tinkham sum rule[16] [17] [18] "asserts that the finite frequency response which is lost in the superconducting transition reappears at the zero frequency 'superconductivity' delta-function."[4] The sum rule is important for many high-Tc superconductivity analyses.[3]

As postdocs in 1956, Michael Tinkham and Rolf Eldridge Glover III[19] demonstrated[20] "the existence of a superconducting "energy gap" by showing that light below a certain frequency was transmitted much more readily through a superconducting film than through a normal metal film. This counter-intuitive result was a landmark confirmation of the famous Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer theory of superconductivity."[21] Subsequently, Glover and Tinkham collaborated with Ferrell on the theory of their discovery.

Selected publications

References

  1. Web site: The Fine Structure of Positrionium (Ph.D. thesis). 1952. 1952PhDT........22F . Ferrell . Richard Allan .
  2. Eschrig . Matthias . Spin-polarized supercurrents for spintronics . Physics Today . AIP Publishing . 64 . 1 . 2011 . 0031-9228 . 10.1063/1.3541944 . 43.
  3. Obituary of Richard Alan Ferrell. Sucher, Joseph. Scalapino, Douglas. Prange, Richard. 18 May 2006. 10.1063/PT.4.2323. Physics Today.
  4. Web site: Prange, Richard. Sucher, Joseph. Scalapino, Douglas. Richard A. Ferrell (1926–2005). Department of Physics, University of Maryland. (This obituary misspells Ferrell middle name as "Alan" — instead of the correct "Allan". The problems in "Smythe" mentioned in the obituary refer to William R. Smythe's textbook Static and Dynamic Electricity.)
  5. Book: The Degree of Doctor of Medicine. University of California, the Eighty-sixth Commencement. June 1949. https://books.google.com/books?id=vgE5AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA166.
  6. Web site: California Institute of Technology, Commencement Exercises. caltech.edu. June 11, 1948. 4.
  7. Web site: California Institute of Technology, Commencement Exercises. caltech.edu. June 10, 1949. 6.
  8. Personals (Caltech alumni information). Engineering and Science. January 1951. 14. 4. 24. California Institute of Technology.
  9. News: Marriages. Princeton Herald. 28. 98. October 10, 1951.
  10. Web site: Richard Allan Ferrell, Ph.D.. Physics Tree.
  11. News: Obituary. U-Md. Prof. Richard Ferrell. December 12, 2005. Washington Post.
  12. Editorial: Memorable papers from the American Journal of Physics, 1933 to 1990. American Journal of Physics. March 1991. 59. 3. 201–207. 10.1119/1.16562 . Romer . Robert H. .
  13. Glaser . V. . Ferrell . R. A. . 1961-02-01 . Lifetime of the Neutral Pion . Physical Review . en . 121 . 3 . 886–892 . 10.1103/PhysRev.121.886 . 0031-899X.
  14. 10.1063/1.3023301. Sunday in Moscow. 1976. Cummings. Herman Z.. Pershan. Peter S.. Klein. Miles V.. Platzman. P. M.. Varma. C. M.. Falicov. L. M.. Bendow. Bernard. Ferrell. Richard A.. Stephen. M. J.. Physics Today. 29. 2. 9–11.
  15. Web site: Richard A. Ferrell Distinguished Faculty Fellowship Fund. Giving to Maryland, University of Maryland.
  16. Ferrell, R. A.. Glover III, Rolfe E.. February 1958. Conductivity of superconducting films: A sum rule. Physical Review. 109. 4. 1398–1399. 10.1103/PhysRev.109.1398.
  17. Tinkham, Michael. Ferrell, R. A.. April 1959. Determination of the superconducting skin depth from the energy gap and sum rule. Physical Review Letters. 2. 8. 331–333. 10.1103/PhysRevLett.2.331.
  18. Homes, C. C.. Dordevic, S. V.. Bonn, D. A.. Liang, R.. Hardy, W. N.. 2004. Sum rules and energy scales in the high-temperature superconductor YBa2Cu3O6+x. Physical Review B. 69. 2. 024514. 10.1103/PhysRevB.69.024514. cond-mat/0303506 . 119390570 . arXiv preprint
  19. Obituary. Rolfe Eldridge Glover III. Ferrell, Richard A.. Lobb, Christopher J. Lobb. Tinkham, Michael. Physics Today. 58. 3. 90–91. March 2005. 10.1063/1.1897575. free.
  20. Transmission of Superconducting Films at Millimeter-Microwave and Far Infrared Frequencies. Glover III, R. E. Glover. Tinkham, M.. Phys. Rev.. 104. 3. 844–845. November 1956. 10.1103/PhysRev.104.844.
  21. Book: Clarke. John. John Clarke (physicist). Silvera, Isaac F.. Beasley, Malcolm R.. Michael Tinkham, 1928-2010 (Biographical Memoirs). 2015. National Academy of Sciences. 1. (See also pages 5 & 6.)

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