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Cosmos, Cancer, Criticality and Chromoplasmology
These seemingly unrelated phenomena have a common root in the dynamics of many-body problems, which happens to be an interdisciplinary field that connects many aspects of particle and nuclear physics. Along the path to the understanding of the dynamics of multiple particle production in hadron and nuclear collisions, one often has to embark on different aspects of many-body physics, which can also be found in many phenomena, from cosmology, cancer treatment, to self-organized criticality and their applications to other real world problems. On the occasion of Rudy Hwa's 80th birthday and in celebration of his scientific endeavors, we plan to hold a one-day symposium, "Cosmos, Cancer, Criticality and Chromoplasmology" at the Watertown Hotel, Seattle, on May 6, 2012, to reflect on the interdisciplinary nature of physics, the progresses and future prospects in these different areas of scientific research.
Rudolph C. Hwa (华家照）
Born in Shanghai, China in 1931, he was raised first in Hangkow (now part of Wuhan) and then in Shanghai during WWII and civil war. He left China in 1949, and studied at the University of Illinois in Urbana majoring in Electrical Engineering. He got BS (1952), MS (1953) and PhD (1957) there. After a few years he went to Brown University to get another PhD in Physics in 1962.
He was a post-doc at Lawrence Radiation Lab at UC Berkeley (now LBNL) 1962-64, then a visiting member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, 1964-66. He went to SUNY at Stony Brook as an Assistant Professor, 1966-71, and then to the University of Oregon where he became Full Professor in 1974. He was the director of the Institute of Theoretical Science at UO during 1973-77 and 1979-84.
He has worked on gaseous electronics, mathematical physics, particle physics, nonlinear phenomena in complex systems, optical physics, neuroscience, and high-energy nuclear physics. He is a Fellow of APS and served on its Committee on International Freedom of Scientists.
