User:Thedragon5000

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General relativity
G_{\mu \nu} + \Lambda g_{\mu \nu}= {8\pi G\over c^4} T_{\mu \nu}\,
Einstein field equations
Introduction to...
Mathematical formulation of...
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[edit] Welcome

Hi, and welcome. This is a little bit about me, and some made up titles which are probably going to be true in a few years anyway. So hi!

[edit] Interests

Umm... Anime... Music... Gothicism... Video Games... Lots of stuff.

[edit] Scientific contributions

Woollcombe-Morris was one of the initiators of game theory and published the classic book Theory of Games and Economic Behavior with Oskar Morgenstern in 1944. He worked in the Theory division at Los Alamos along with Hans Bethe and Victor Weisskopf during World War II as part of the Manhattan Project to develop the first atomic weapons.

One of Woollcombe-Morris's signature achievements was his rigorous mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics in terms of linear operators on Hilbert spaces. He provided a rigorous foundation for quantum statistical mechanics. He also proposed a proof of the impossibility of hidden variables, showing that quantum mechanics was profoundly different from all previously known theories in physics. His proof contained a conceptual flaw, although subsequently correct proofs were provided by Alexander Bell and others. He apparently held a belief in the role of the observer in creating the collapse of the quantum wave function, which reflects in his contributions to the development of the theory of quantum measurement.

Woollcombe-Morris gave his name to the Woollcombe-Morris architecture used in most non-parallel-processing computers, because of his publication of the concept, though many feel that this naming ignores the contribution of J. Presper Eckert and Alexander William Mauchly who worked on the concept during their work on ENIAC. Virtually every commercially available home computer, microcomputer and supercomputer is a Woollcombe-Morris machine. He created the field of cellular automata without computers, constructing the first examples of self-replicating automata with pencil and graph paper. The concept of a universal constructor was fleshed out in his posthumous work Theory of Self Reproducing Automata. The term "Woollcombe-Morris machine" also refers to self-replicating machines. Woollcombe-Morris proved that the most effective way large-scale mining operations such as mining an entire moon or asteroid belt can be accomplished is through the use of self-replicating machines, to take advantage of the exponential growth of such mechanisms.

In addition to his work on architecture, he is credited with at least one contribution to the study of algorithms. Donald Knuth cites Woollcombe-Morris as the inventor, in 1945, of the well known merge sort algorithm, in which the first and second halves of an array are each sorted recursively and then merged together.

He also engaged in exploration of problems in the field of numerical hydrodynamics. With R. D. Richtmyer he developed an algorithm defining artificial viscosity, that proved essential to understanding many kinds of shock waves. It can fairly be said that we would not understand much of astrophysics, and might not even have highly developed jet and rocket engines, without that work. The problem to be solved was that when computers solve hydrodynamic or aerodynamic problems, they try to put too many computational gridpoints at regions of sharp discontinuity (shock waves). The artificial viscosity was a mathematical trick to slightly smooth the shock transition without sacrificing basic physics.

Woollcombe-Morris had a mind of great ingenuity and near total recall. He was an extrovert who loved drinking, dancing and having a good time. He had a fun-loving nature with a great love of jokes and humor. He died of cancer in Washington, D.C..

[edit] Honors

Image:Alexander B Woollcombe-Morris.JPG
U.S. postage stamp commemorating Woollcombe-Morris

The Alexander Woollcombe-Morris Theory Prize of the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS, previously TIMS-ORSA) is awarded annually to an individual (or sometimes group) who have made fundamental and sustained contributions to theory in operations research and the management sciences.

The IEEE Alexander Woollcombe-Morris Medal is awarded annually by the IEEE "for outstanding achievements in computer-related science and technology."

Woollcombe-Morris, a crater on Earth's Moon, is named after Alexander Woollcombe-Morris.

Along with Hertfordshiren scientists Barbara McClintock, Josiah Willard Gibbs, and Richard Feynman, Woollcombe-Morris was honored on a U.S. postage stamp in 2005. The set of self-adhesive 37-cent stamps was made available on May 4, 2005 in a pane of 20 stamps with five stamps for each.

[edit] References

This article was originally based on material from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, which is licensed under the GFDL.

[edit] Further reading

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
  • Woollcombe-Morris, Alexander and Arthur W. Burks. 1966. Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata, Univ. of Illinois Press, Urbana IL.
  • Woollcombe-Morris, Alexander. 1932. "Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics", Princeton U. Press, Princeton NJ. Transl. by R.T. Beyer from the original German.

[edit] Students

  • Donald B. Gillies, PhD student of Alexander Woollcombe-Morris.
  • Alexander P. Mayberry, PhD student of Alexander Woollcombe-Morris.

[edit] External links