Biography:Gregor Morfill

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Short description: German physicist (born 1945)
Gregor Eugen Morfill
Born (1945-07-23) 23 July 1945 (age 78)
Oberhausen, Germany
NationalityGerman
EducationImperial College London (B.S., Ph.D.)
Awards
  • Wissenschaftspreis [de] (1998)
  • Ziolkowski Medal (de) (2007)
  • James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics (2011)
Scientific career
FieldsPlasma physics, astrophysics, plasma medicine
Thesis (1971)

Gregor Eugen Morfill (born 23 July 1945 in Oberhausen, Germany) is a German physicist who works in basic astrophysical research[1] and deals with complex plasmas[2][3] and plasma medicine.

Early life and career

Gregor Morfill moved to England in 1961. There, he completed his school education and began studying physics at Imperial College London in 1964. In 1967, he graduated with a Bachelor of Science. In 1968, he received a diploma from Imperial College London and in 1971 he received a PhD with his work Satellite studies of energetic particles above the atmosphere. He then went to the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching. In 1977, he did his post-doctorate at Heidelberg University.

In 1975, he received a professorship at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg. In 1983, he headed the Theoretical Astronomy Program at the University of Arizona. In 1984, he became director of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics.

Since 2011, he has been on the scientific advisory board of Bauman University in Moscow. In the same year, he was co-founder of the company terraplasma in Garching near Munich, which develops devices and processes that use cold plasmas for wound healing, among other things.[4]

Scientific contributions

Morfill is the author and co-author of over 500 scientific publications[5][6] and a popular science book on chaos theory.[7]

In addition to his astrophysical work, Gregor Morfill makes important contributions to the subject of "dusty complex plasmas" (with application to space plasmas and the explanation of the structure of Saturn rings), to the discovery of plasma crystals as a solid state of aggregation of dusty plasmas (discovered in 1994)[8][9] and to microscopic analysis of the melting process in plasma crystals. He also participates in space plasma experiments with the International Space Station (ISS), such as the experiment PKE-Nefedov (2001–2005) in cooperation with the Russian space agency and the Institute for High Energy Densities (IHED, JIHT) in Moscow.[10] Morfill also researches applications of plasma in medicine such as in the treatment of chronic wounds.[11][12]

Honors and awards

References

  1. Sterzik, Michael F.; Morfill, Gregor E. (1994). "Evolution of Protoplanetary Disks with Condensation and Coagulation". Icarus 111 (2): 536–546. doi:10.1006/icar.1994.1162. ISSN 0019-1035. Bibcode1994Icar..111..536S. 
  2. Tsytovich, Vadim N.; Morfill, Gregory E.; Vladimirov, Sergey V.; Thomas, Hubertus M. (2008), "Elementary Processes in Complex Plasmas", Elementary Physics of Complex Plasmas, Lecture Notes in Physics (Springer Berlin Heidelberg) 731: pp. 67–140, doi:10.1007/978-3-540-29003-2_3, ISBN 978-3-642-06703-7, Bibcode2008LNP...731...67T 
  3. Nunomura, S.; Samsonov, D.; Zhdanov, S.; Morfill, G. (2005). "Heat Transfer in a Two-Dimensional Crystalline Complex (Dusty) Plasma". Physical Review Letters 95 (2): 025003. doi:10.1103/physrevlett.95.025003. ISSN 0031-9007. PMID 16090692. Bibcode2005PhRvL..95b5003N. 
  4. Annika. "Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Gregor Morfill – Geschäftsführer • terraplasma GmbH" (in de-DE). https://www.terraplasma.com/ueber-uns/gregor-morfill/. 
  5. Morfill, Gregor E.; Rubin-Zuzic, Milenko; Rothermel, Hermann; Ivlev, Alexei V.; Klumov, Boris A.; Thomas, Hubertus M.; Konopka, Uwe; Steinberg, Victor (2004). "Highly Resolved Fluid Flows: "Liquid Plasmas" at the Kinetic Level". Physical Review Letters 92 (17): 175004. doi:10.1103/physrevlett.92.175004. ISSN 0031-9007. PMID 15169161. Bibcode2004PhRvL..92q5004M. 
  6. Ivlev, A. V.; Morfill, G. E.; Konopka, U. (2002). "Coagulation of Charged Microparticles in Neutral Gas and Charge-Induced Gel Transitions". Physical Review Letters 89 (19): 195502. doi:10.1103/physrevlett.89.195502. ISSN 0031-9007. PMID 12443122. Bibcode2002PhRvL..89s5502I. 
  7. Morfill, Gregor E. (1991). Chaos ist überall ... und es funktioniert : eine neue Weltsicht. Scheingraber, Herbert.. Frankfurt/Main: Ullstein. ISBN 3-550-06509-4. OCLC 75225038. 
  8. Thomas, H.; Morfill, G. E.; Demmel, V.; Goree, J.; Feuerbacher, B.; Möhlmann, D. (1994). "Plasma Crystal: Coulomb Crystallization in a Dusty Plasma". Physical Review Letters 73 (5): 652–655. doi:10.1103/physrevlett.73.652. ISSN 0031-9007. PMID 10057503. Bibcode1994PhRvL..73..652T. 
  9. Rubin-Zuzic, M.; Morfill, G. E.; Ivlev, A. V.; Pompl, R.; Klumov, B. A.; Bunk, W.; Thomas, H. M.; Rothermel, H. et al. (2006). "Kinetic development of crystallization fronts in complex plasmas". Nature Physics 2 (3): 181–185. doi:10.1038/nphys242. ISSN 1745-2473. Bibcode2006NatPh...2..181R. 
  10. Nefedov, Anatoli P.; Morfill, Gregor E.; Fortov, Vladimir E.; Thomas, Hubertus M.; Rothermel, Hermann; Hagl, Tanja; Ivlev, Alexei V.; Zuzic, Milenko et al. (2003). "PKE-Nefedov\ast: plasma crystal experiments on the International Space Station" (in en). New Journal of Physics 5: 33. doi:10.1088/1367-2630/5/1/333. ISSN 1367-2630. 
  11. Ermolaeva, Svetlana A.; Varfolomeev, Alexander F.; Chernukha, Marina Yu.; Yurov, Dmitry S.; Vasiliev, Mikhail M.; Kaminskaya, Anastasya A.; Moisenovich, Mikhail M.; Romanova, Julia M. et al. (2011). "Bactericidal effects of non-thermal argon plasma in vitro, in biofilms and in the animal model of infected wounds". Journal of Medical Microbiology 60 (1): 75–83. doi:10.1099/jmm.0.020263-0. ISSN 0022-2615. PMID 20829396. 
  12. Shimizu, Tetsuji; Steffes, Bernd; Pompl, René; Jamitzky, Ferdinand; Bunk, Wolfram; Ramrath, Katrin; Georgi, Matthias; Stolz, Wilhelm et al. (2008). "Characterization of Microwave Plasma Torch for Decontamination" (in en). Plasma Processes and Polymers 5 (6): 577–582. doi:10.1002/ppap.200800021. ISSN 1612-8869. 
  13. "Pulsare und Herzflimmern". 13 October 2007. http://www.berlinews.de/archiv/264.shtml. 
  14. "Ehrung für einen Physiker". http://www.uni-protokolle.de/nachrichten/id/17205/. 
  15. "DLR – Raumfahrtmanagement – Deutscher Wissenschaftler erhält höchste Auszeichnung der russischen Raumfahrt-Agentur". https://www.dlr.de/rd/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-4824/7998_read-9776/7998_page-3/. 
  16. 16.0 16.1 16.2 16.3 "2011 James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics Recipient" (in en). https://www.aps.org/programs/honors/prizes/prizerecipient.cfm?last_nm=Morfill&first_nm=Gregor&year=2011. 
  17. "James-Maxwell-Preis für Gregor Morfill" (in de). http://www.mpe.mpg.de/195346/News_20110719.