Dennis Holliday

Dennis Holliday passed away on March 18, 2021 at the age of 85. He was born on November 22, 1935 in San Francisco, California, and graduated from Stanford University in 1957 with a B.S. in engineering science. In 1960, he earned a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Princeton University and wrote his dissertation on nucleon Compton scattering under the supervision of Marvin Goldberger. From 1960 to 1961, he was a NATO Postdoctoral Fellow in Theoretical Physics at the Institute of Theoretical Physics, University of Lund, Sweden, under the supervision of Gunnar Källén. Upon returning to the United States, he became a research associate at the Department of Physics and Institute of Theoretical Science of the University of Oregon.

From 1963 to 1971, Dennis was a member of the physics department of the RAND Corporation, where he published papers on scattering theory, quantum optics, quantum electronics, quantum statistical mechanics, nuclear proliferation technology, economics, and policy, and the economics of nuclear power, including collaborations with physicists at other institutions. With Martin Sage of the University of Oregon, he published one of the early basic papers on quantum optics. With Alfred Glassgold of New York University, he developed a new method—the dynamical characteristic function—for describing the temporal evolution of statistical states, which was used to investigate laser amplification and the collapse of a statistical state after measurement. With Milton Plesset of Caltech, he published a technical and economic analysis of gas centrifuge technology, which was presented to the Atomic Energy Commission.

In 1971, Dennis and other members of the RAND Physics Department formed R&D Associates, where he conducted research on the Remote Imaging Program for the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense. He published papers on radar scattering theory, the generation and interaction of internal waves and surface waves in the ocean, and remote sensing of the sea surface. He collaborated with the economist Vincent Taylor on a booklet about the future of nuclear power for the California Seminar on Arms Control and Foreign Policy, as well as with Michael McIntyre of Cambridge University on methods of calculating available potential energy in fluids.

In the 1980s, Dennis and his coworkers Gaetan St.-Cyr and Nancy Woods developed the integral equation method for radar ocean imagining. As a nationally recognized authority on radar ocean imaging, Dennis gave congressional testimony on that and related subjects. In the 1990s, working with Lester DeRaad and Gaetan St.-Cyr, he developed the influential “forward-backward” method for solving the magnetic field integral equation for rough surface scattering.

Dennis retired in 2000 and returned to questions from his postdoctoral studies concerning renormalization in quantum field theory.

In his free time, Dennis was a glider pilot and later an avid cyclist. Above all, he was a loving husband and father. He was married to Pamela Dokken Holliday from 1971 to her death in 2016. He is survived by his sister, Martha Dickson, his two sons—Wilson Taylor Holliday and Wesley Halcrow Holliday—and two grandchildren—Eleanor Hadley Holliday and Everett King Holliday.