Walter Greiner 1935 - 2016

I don't think I posted anything here last year noting the death of Walter Greiner.  He was a major figure in nuclear physics in all the time I've been doing it, and someone closely related to people I have had close links with research-wise, though I only actually bumped into him a couple of times that I remember.  

Anyway, I notice that the European Physical Society posted an obituary of him earlier this month, so rather than attempt to write a potted biography of someone I knew mostly through second-hand observations,  I direct interested readers to the EPS obituary.

Machiavellian spot-the-difference

This is somewhat off-topic, but I wonder if readers have ever noticed the similarity in appearance between Florentine politico Machiavelli, whose most famous work advocated acting immorally if it achieves the desired political ends, and contemporary politician Jeremy Hunt, who has governmental responsibility for looking after the NHS?

Machiavelli

Hunt

Boars in Fukushima

Wild Boars take over abandoned town in the Fukushima Prefecture: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-39216242

Euroschool on Exotic Beams

I notice that the latest in the series of Euroschools on Exotic Beams is open for registration.  It is a summer school intended for PhD students and young researchers working on nuclear physics involving radioactive ion beams.  If you are such a person reading this, then follow the link above to have a look and consider applying to attend.  There are a great range of lecturers covering experimental and theoretical aspects, and spending a few days in Normandy in late summer can't be the worst thing to do.  

The Euroschool series has a great history of publishing the lecture notes and making them freely available.  If you follow the link above you can easily find them.  They are a great resource for graduate level nuclear physics study, covering a very broad range of topics.  It also includes one instance of my friend and colleague Wilton Catford citing a certain R. A. Zimmerman.

Ludvig Faddeev (1934 – 2017)

I saw from a friend's Facebook post that Ludvig Faddeev, known to me for his eponymous equations, died a couple of days ago.

Faddeev was a mathematician and physicist whose work is of great importance in few-body nuclear physics.  In particular, he developed a method for solving the quantum three-body problem that can be used when studying, e.g the triton or 3He, but also weakly-bound nuclei in which there is 2-neutron halo along with a strongly-bound core, such as 11Li. 

At this point I have to confess that I have never tried solving the Faddeev equation myself, though this blog post is tempting me to do so.  If someone reading would like to write a quick primer, then I'd be more than happy to post it here.