Vinay Ambegaokar papers

Collection

Identifier: 14-22-4461

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Scope and Contents

The Vinay Ambegaokar Papers document the extensive research, teaching, and administrative activities and publications of the Goldwin Smith Professor of Physics Emeritus at Cornell University, Vinay Ambegaokar (1934- ), dating from 1942-2018. The collection includes biographical files, such as professor’s personal writing and poems, extensive correspondence related to research, publications, proposal evaluations, and more; research material with subject notes, scientific papers, preparation material for publications lectures, and presentations; handwritten lecture notebooks and other teaching material, including syllabus, assignments, lectures, final examinations, problem sets, and notes; publications by the professor and by other researchers; administrative files, including the Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large (PAL) Program. Finally, there are a few photographs, slides, a DVD about the power of the sun, CDs, transparencies, and flash drives with video lectures, photographs, and several documents, most of which already exist in print form throughout the collection.

Dates

1942-2018

Biographical / Historical

Vinay Ambegaokar (1934, January 16- ) was born in Nagpur, Madhya Pradesh, India. In 1956, he earned his B.S., S.M. Mechanical Engineering Honors Program from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Four years later (1960), he completed his doctorate in Theoretical Physics from the Carnegie Institute of Technology, focusing on the Electromagnetic properties of insulators from a many-particle point of view. During his post-doctoral studies (1960 to 1962), he served as a Ford Foundation Research Associate at the Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark. Professor Vinay Ambegaokar taught in Cornell's School of Physics from 1962 until his retirement in July 2007 and supervised 20 Ph.D. theses. From 1969 to 1971, he also served as the Director of the Research Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Helsinki, Finland. His research focused on condensed matter and low-temperature physics, some aspects of disordered metallic conductors, quantum information and its loss through decoherence, and mathematical ways of describing these phenomena. Professor Vinay Ambegaokar collaborated with several companies and institutions in the US, Europe, India, and more, such as the North American-Rockwell Science Center; Brookhaven National Laboratory; IBM Watson Research Center; Institute of Theoretical Physics, UCSB; Collège de France; University of Karlsruhe; NORDITA, Copenhagen; University of Florida; All Souls College, Oxford; Bohr Institute, Copenhagen; Raman Research Institute, Bangalore, India and more. He was a fellow of professional, scientific, and honorary societies, such as the American Physical Society (1979), the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (1965-1967), and the J. S. Guggenheim (1983-84). He is a recipient of the Medal of the University of Helsinki in 1971, the Medal of the Collège de France in 1986, the Humboldt Foundation Senior U. S. Scientist (1986, 1990), and the John Bardeen Prize in 2015. He got married to Saga Mirjam Vuori on June 26, 1956. He has two daughters, Maia Anneli and Liisa Ambegaokar Grigorov.

Extent

10.2 cubic feet.

Language of Materials

English

Additional Description

Abstract

Biographical files, correspondence, research subject files and notes, scientific papers, presentations, lectures, handwritten lecture notebooks and other course-related material, publications, reviews, drafts, reprints, administrative files, photographs, slides, DVDs, CDs, transparencies, and flash drives of the Goldwin Smith Professor of Physics Emeritus at Cornell University, Vinay Ambegaokar (1934- ), document his research, teaching, and administrative activities, dating from 1942-2018.

Separated Materials

1) Gould, Christopher M. Superfluid He3 in Narrow Cylinders, 1979-01 Ph.D. Thesis. Report: 4024. Research Group Prof. D.M. Lee, LASSP, Cornell University. 2) Woo, James Wing Fai. Transport Equations for Superconductors and Thermal Conductivity of Superconductors, 1966-06 Ph.D. Thesis. Report: 499. Advisor: V. Ambegaokar. Material Science Center, Cornell University. 3) Janko, Boldizsar. Number Parity Effects in Superconductors, 1996 Ph.D. Thesis. Advisor: V. Ambegaokar. Cornell University. 4) Von Delft, Jan. 2 Channel Kondo Scaling in Metal Nanoconstrictions. A conformal Field Theory Calculation of Scaling Function, 1995 Ph.D. Thesis. Advisor: V. Ambegaokar. Cornell University. 5) Ambegaokar, V. Reasoning about Luck: Probability and its Uses in Physics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017