Fifty-one years after the doctorate, still first author on a paper in Physical Review C.
Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Ohio University, where he has taught and run experiments since 1978, following a decade as a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Three strands of nuclear physics, pursued across five decades.
How many ways a nucleus can hold its energy. Near the ground state you can count the states one at a time; higher up you can only describe them statistically.
How many ways a nucleus can hold its energy. Near the ground state you can count the states one at a time; higher up you can only describe them statistically.
What happens when a neutron meets a nucleus: the subject of the volume he edited in 1985, and of the neutron work run at the Edwards Accelerator Laboratory.
What happens when a neutron meets a nucleus: the subject of the volume he edited in 1985, and of the neutron work run at the Edwards Accelerator Laboratory.
MeV neutron cross sections measured by time-of-flight, named by Ohio University as his research interest when it made him a Distinguished Professor.
MeV neutron cross sections measured by time-of-flight, named by Ohio University as his research interest when it made him a Distinguished Professor.
Low down you can count the states. Higher up you cannot.
A doctorate in 1968, and a paper still landing in 2019.
Years at Lawrence Livermore
At Ohio University since
Named Distinguished Professor
Volumes edited
From Livermore to Athens, and the accelerator he ran there.
Hired full time in 1981 after three years as a visiting professor. He directed the Edwards Accelerator Laboratory until 1991, was named a Distinguished Professor in 2001, and is now Distinguished Professor Emeritus.
Hired as a physicist by the laboratory that had hosted him as a postdoctoral fellow. He stayed a decade, and began teaching at Ohio University as a visiting professor in 1978 while still on the Livermore staff.
He consults for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and for Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. In June 2019 he was first and corresponding author on a paper in Physical Review C, fifty-one years after the doctorate.
Steven Grimes has spent his career on a question you cannot answer by counting: how many ways a nucleus can hold its energy.
Near the ground state the arrangements are few enough to list one at a time. Raise the energy and they multiply until listing them is hopeless, and the only honest description left is a statistical one. That multiplication is the level density. Measuring it, and working out the rules it follows, is what he does. Ohio University’s own phrase for his speciality is the statistical structure of nuclei.
He came to Athens in 1978 as a visiting professor while still on the staff at Lawrence Livermore, joined full time in 1981, and directed the Edwards Accelerator Laboratory until 1991, running the machine as well as using it. The neutron work that runs through his publications was done there.
From a bachelor’s degree in 1963 to a Physical Review C paper in 2019.
Recognition from a university, a society and the literature.
Ohio University’s highest faculty honour, awarded in 2001 and listed under Physics in the university’s own register of recipients.
Fellowship of the American Physical Society, the professional body of American physicists.
Named an Outstanding Referee in 2008, for the unpaid and anonymous work of reading other physicists’ papers.
Ohio University’s accelerator laboratory began in 1962 with a 150‑kV Cockcroft‑Walton machine housed in an automobile garage. A one million dollar Atomic Energy Commission grant paid for the 4.5‑MV tandem in 1967, and the first experiments ran in 1971. He directed it until 1991. It is named for John E. Edwards, 1932 to 1972.
Reading, photography and travel. On what should draw the next generation into the field, he has said they ought to be personally invested in the subject and find it genuinely captivating, a fair description of a man still publishing five decades after his doctorate.
For research correspondence, consulting enquiries, collaboration or requests to speak.
Department of Physics and Astronomy
Ohio University, Athens, Ohio 45701
Athens, Ohio, United States
Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Ohio University
Consulting · Speaking
Collaboration