Martin Gutzwiller
| Martin C. Gutzwiller | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
October 12, 1925 Basel, Switzerland |
| Died | March 3, 2014 (aged 88) New York City, New York |
| Fields | Quantum chaos, Complex Systems |
| Institutions | IBM, Columbia University, Yale University |
| Alma mater |
ETH Zurich, Kansas University |
| Doctoral advisor | Max Dresden |
| Known for | Gutzwiller approximation Gutzwiller trace formula |
| Notable awards |
Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics (1993) Max Planck Medal (2003) |
Martin Charles Gutzwiller (12 October 1925 – 3 March 2014) was a Swiss-American physicist, known for his work on field theory, quantum chaos, and complex systems. He spent most of his career at IBM Research, and was also an adjunct professor of physics at Yale University.
Gutzwiller was born on October 12, 1925 in the Swiss city of Basel. He completed a Diploma degree from ETH Zurich, where he studied quantum physics under Wolfgang Pauli. He then went to the University of Kansas and completed a Ph.D under Max Dresden. After graduation, he worked on microwave engineering for Brown, Boveri & Cie, on geophysics for Shell Oil, and eventually for IBM Research in Switzerland, New York City, and Yorktown Heights, until his retirement in 1993. He also held temporary teaching appointments at Columbia University, ETH Zurich, Paris-Orsay, and . He was Vice Chair for the Committee on Mathematical Physics, of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, from 1987 to 1993. He joined Yale University as adjunct professor in 1993, retaining the position until his retirement.
Gutzwiller formulated the Gutzwiller approximation for describing electrons with strong local interactions in terms of the Gutzwiller wave function, composed of a simple many-electron wave function acted on by a correlation operator ("Gutzwiller projection"). He was also the first to investigate the relationship between classical and quantum mechanics in chaotic systems. In that context, he developed the Gutzwiller trace formula, the main result of periodic orbit theory, which gives a recipe for computing spectra from periodic orbits of a system. He is the author of the classic monograph on the subject, Chaos in Classical and Quantum Mechanics (1990).
...
Wikipedia