Llewellyn Thomas

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the Welsh scholar generally known as Llewellyn Thomas, see Thomas Llewellyn Thomas. For the English cricketer, see Llewellyn Thomas (cricketer).

Llewellyn Hilleth Thomas
Copenhagen 1926
Born	(1903-10-21)21 October 1903 London, United Kingdom
Died	20 April 1992(1992-04-20) (aged 88) Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
Thesis	Contributions to the theory of the motion of electrified particles through matter and some effects of that motion (1927)
Influences	Wallace John Eckert

Llewellyn Hilleth Thomas (21 October 1903 – 20 April 1992) was a British physicist and applied mathematician.^[1] He is best known for his contributions to atomic physics, in particular:

Thomas precession, a correction to the spin-orbit interaction in quantum mechanics, which takes into account the relativistic time dilation between the electron and the nucleus of an atom.
The Thomas–Fermi model, a statistical model of the atom subsequently developed by Dirac and Weizsäcker, which later formed the basis of density functional theory.
Thomas collapse - effect in few-body physics, which corresponds to infinite value of the three body binding energy for zero-range potentials.

His name is frequently attached to an efficient Gaussian elimination method for tridiagonal matrices—the Thomas algorithm.

Born in London, he studied at Cambridge University, receiving his BA, PhD, and MA degrees in 1924, 1927 and 1928 respectively. He proposed Thomas Precession in 1926, to explain the difference between predictions made by spin-orbit coupling theory and experimental observations.

In 1929 he obtained a job as a professor of physics at the Ohio State University, where he stayed until 1943. He married Naomi Estelle Frech in 1933. From 1943 until 1945 he worked on ballistics at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. In 1946 he became a member of the staff of the Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory at Columbia University, remaining there until 1968. In 1958 he was elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He was appointed visiting professor at North Carolina State University in 1968, retiring from this position in 1976. He died in Raleigh, North Carolina.

References

↑ Price, Peter J. (September 1994). "Obituary: Llewellyn H. Thomas". Physics Today 47 (9): 115–116. doi:10.1063/1.2808649.

Authority control	VIAF: 69725797 GND: 118802038

Persondata
Name	Thomas, Llewellyn
Alternative names
Short description	British mathematician
Date of birth	21 October 1903
Place of birth	London, United Kingdom
Date of death	20 April 1992
Place of death	Raleigh, North Carolina, USA

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike; additional terms may apply for the media files.