Fred Ribe

Fred Ribe, Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington and a leading pioneer in US fusion energy research, died on 19 June 2019 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, at age 94. He was born 14 August 1924 in Laredo, Texas.

Ribe was a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His awards included Outstanding Achievement from the American Nuclear Society, Distinguished Career and Lifetime Achievement from Fusion Power Associates, and Distinguished Graduate of the University of Texas Cockrell School of Engineering.

He earned a BS in electrical engineering from the University of Texas in 1944 and served during the war in US Navy signal intelligence, rising to the rank of lieutenant junior grade. After the war, he helped start up Engineering Research Associates. He then earned an MS (1950) and PhD (1951) in physics under Samuel Allison and Gerhardt Groetzinger at the University of Chicago, coauthoring journal articles on particle-scattering cross sections.

Ribe worked at Los Alamos from 1951 to 1977, rising to group leader and division leader and coauthoring more than 60 papers and many technical reports, notably two reviews of fusion research authored with Richard Post in 1974 and 1975. Ribe’s career there began in nuclear reactions, fast neutrons, atomic collisions and high-energy accelerator research. In 1952, at Eniwetok Atoll, he helped monitor the detonation of the first hydrogen bomb.

In 1956 he began research in controlled thermonuclear fusion for generating electricity as a member of Project Sherwood and the Controlled Thermonuclear Research Division. He contributed to a series of experiments investigating the behavior of linear and toroidal pinches seeking to achieve plasma compression and confinement. These included the first controlled laboratory thermonuclear plasma in 1958, with Jim Tuck as group leader. Ribe then focused on pulsed-power Z- and theta-pinches. These included the Scylla 4P in 1973 which, with Ribe as group leader, demonstrated that a pulsed-power-induced plasma could be held a sufficient distance inside the outer solid-material chamber wall to reach and sustain high temperature and high pressure.

As founding leader of the Controlled Thermonuclear Research Division, Ribe encouraged and stimulated a wide range of exciting and innovative experimental and theoretical work, including plasma guns, basic plasma experiments, large-scale plasma numerical computation, and field-reversed, fast-liner, and spheromak fusion reactor configurations. These efforts produced knowledge that contributes to current fusion research. Ribe led more than 130 staff in completion of the large Scyllac high-beta stellarator full-torus test reactor from 1974 to 1977. This experiment was never fully carried out.

While at Los Alamos, Ribe was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship to perform research at the Max Planck Institute in Munich. He was also a visiting professor at the University of Iowa and an adjunct faculty member at the University of Texas at Austin. He led a petition drive in 1954 in support of reinstated security status for J. Robert Oppenheimer that garnered many signatories within the lab.

Ribe was professor of nuclear engineering at the University of Washington from 1977 to 1989. He taught nuclear physics, experimental design and diagnostics, and plasma physics, and mentored successful PhD students and postdoctoral research associates. At Washington he continued his stellarator-relevant theta pinch research. He held a guest professor appointment at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Lausanne.

Ribe was editor-in-chief of the plasma physics component of Physics of Fluids from 1982 to 1988 and then of the successor standalone journal Physics of Fluids B (now Physics of Plasmas) until 1990. He was chairman of the US Department of Energy Magnetic Fusion Advisory Committee from 1984 to 1988 that assessed the status of fusion science and prioritized future research and funding recommendations. He served on other advisory boards to DOE and APS, and he was known for his initiatives to foster discussions and presentations on fusion technology.

The fusion community bids a heartfelt farewell to a dear colleague, collaborator, leader, scientist, and professor. His technical initiative, dedication to mentorship, and warm personality will be deeply missed. Ribe lived a full life of family and friends, singing in choruses and light operas, enjoying a cabin in the mountains and another on a beach, traveling widely and pursuing many diverse outdoor recreation activities. He is preceded in death by his first wife and a son and is survived by his second wife, Margorie Christensen Ribe, three sons, three daughters-in-law, four grandchildren and one great granddaughter.