Berni Alder

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Berni Julian Alder
University of California at Davis
ThesisThe Radial Distribution Function and the Thermodynamic Properties of Monatomic Liquids (1952)
Doctoral advisorJohn Gamble Kirkwood

Berni Julian Alder (September 9, 1925 – September 7, 2020) was a German-born American physicist specialized in statistical mechanics, and a pioneer of computational modelling of matter.[3]

Biography

Alder was born in

University of California at Berkeley and a master's degree in chemical engineering from the same institution in 1947. He went to the California Institute of Technology[4] to study under John Gamble Kirkwood for his PhD in 1948 and worked for the investigation of phase transitions in hard-sphere gas with Stan Frankel, where he got the idea to use the Monte Carlo method. After he finished at Caltech in 1952, he went to Berkeley and worked part-time at Berkeley to teach chemistry and part-time as a consultant under the suggestion of Edward Teller in the nuclear weapons program for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to help with the equations of state. In collaboration with Thomas Everett Wainwright, and Mary Ann Mansigh, he developed techniques for molecular dynamics simulation in the mid-1950s,[5] including the liquid-solid phase transition for hard sphere[6] and the velocity autocorrelations function decay in liquids.[7][8]

Alder, along with Teller, was one of the founders of the

University of California at Davis
, and later professor emeritus.

In 2001, he was awarded the Boltzmann Medal for inventing technique of molecular dynamics simulation.

He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2008.[10] In 2009, he was awarded the National Medal of Science.[11]

Alder was a Guggenheim Fellow. He was the editor of the book series Methods in Computational Physics and the founder of the magazine Computing.

Alder died on September 7, 2020, of heart failure.[2]

References

  1. ISBN 1857432177
    .
  2. ^ a b Berni Alder obituary
  3. doi:10.1038/d41586-020-02858-5
    .
  4. ^ a b c d "Interview with Berni J. Alder" (PDF). CECAM. Retrieved 10 October 2022.
  5. doi:10.1063/1.1730376
    .
  6. doi:10.1063/1.1743957
    .
  7. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.127.359
    .
  8. doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.1.18
    .
  9. ^ "UCD professor emeritus to receive National Medal of Science at White House next month". Davis Enterprise. September 22, 2009. Retrieved January 13, 2013.
  10. ^ "Book of Members, 1780-2010: Chapter A" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 14 April 2011.
  11. ^ "Berni Alder receives National Medal of Science". Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. 2009-09-18. Archived from the original on 2010-05-27. Retrieved 2010-02-12.

External links

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