WSU physicist Tomsovic awarded Fellowship

Steven Tomsovic, professor and chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Washington State University, has been offered the 2006-2007 Martin-Gutzwiller Fellowship by the Max-Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems. 

The fellowship provides a stipend that will allow Tomsovic to spend a year conducting research at the institute in Dresden, Germany. It also includes funding for a doctoral or postdoctoral fellow to accompany him. 

Tomsovic is noted for his theoretical physics research in the area of quantum chaos, the study of the underlying role of complex particle motions in the wave-like behavior found in the microscopic world. His work has covered quantum dots and point contacts, nuclear physics, ocean acoustics and mathematical physics.

“Three of the most important institutes in my field are the Laboratory of Theoretical Physics and Statistical Models in Orsay, France, the physics department at the University of Bristol in England, and the Max Planck-Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Dresden,” Tomsovic said. “This is a tremendous opportunity.”

“The Planck Institute has a large visitors program. Many of the top up-and-coming young researchers spend time there. They are able to pull together the best people in various fields and form topical working groups. In addition, the Max Planck Institute is a mile from the Technical University of Dresden, which also has a very strong faculty in my field with whom I have ongoing collaborations,” he said.

Tomsovic spent part of a sabbatical at the Max Planck Institute in 2001-2002 and part at Harvard. He spent two years at Orsay in the mid-1980s.  He earned a doctorate at the University of Rochester, New York, (1987) and was a visiting fellow at Harvard, the University of California, Santa Cruz, and was a research professor at the University of Washington before coming to WSU in 1994. He became chair of the physics and astronomy department in 2002.

“Receiving the Martin-Gutzwiller fellowship is a great honor for Professor Tomsovic,” said Dean of Sciences Michael Griswold. “It is not something you apply for, the selection committee chooses the recipient based on their knowledge of a person’s work. A scientist must be at the top of his field to receive it.”

Martin Gutzwiller fellowships honor the seminal contributions to theoretical physics by Swiss-born physicist Gutzwiller, who is now at Yale, which are particularly relevant for nonlinear dynamics in complex systems. The fellowships acknowledge and promote exceptional research in this field.  Experimental relevance of theoretical concepts was one of the guiding principles behind Martin Gutzwiller’s work and forms an important selection criterion for the fellowship.