Obituary of Vijay R. Pandharipande

Professor Vijay R. Pandharipande, Donald B. and Elizabeth M. Willett Professor in Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, died on January 3, 2006, in Boston, where he was receiving medical treatment.

Professor Pandharipande was born on August 7, 1940, in India. He received a bachelor’s and master’s degree in mathematics, applied mathematics, and physics from the College of Science, Nagpur, India, in 1959 and 1961, respectively, and his Ph.D. in physics from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bombay, India, in 1969. He came to the Department of Physics at the University of Illinois as a research associate in 1972 and was appointed to the faculty in 1973. He also held a visiting faculty appointment at Argonne National Laboratory from 1983 until his death.

An internationally recognized nuclear theorist, Professor Pandharipande played a leading role in the development of the nuclear many-body problem. His contributions have led to a state-of-the-art comprehensive, quantitative, and reliable theory of nuclei, neutron matter, and neutron stars, and have been extended more generally to quantum liquids. His theoretical contributions have set the agenda for experimental work, significantly advancing the use of electron scattering as a probe of nuclear structure.

Working with his graduate students and collaborators, he initiated and carried through over several decades a successful research program to describe all nuclear systems in terms of the elementary two- and three-body interactions of the constituent nucleons. His pioneering variational Monte Carlo calculations have become the standard methods for the field.

In addition to his nuclear studies, Professor Pandharipande applied his expertise to condensed matter physics, where his research included Bose and Fermi helium liquids and drops, including structure, response, and elementary excitations. Most notably, he predicted structures subsequently observed in the dynamic response of Bose superfluid helium and demonstrated the important effects of the enhancement of the effective mass at the Fermi surface of Fermi liquid helium.

Professor Pandharipande was a life member of the Indian Physical Society, a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and a permanent member of the University of Illinois Center for Advanced Study. He served as a member of the editorial board of Physical Review C, American Physical Society, 1991-1994, and a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Physics G: Nuclear and Particle Physics, Institute of Physics (U.K.). He also served as an editor for Nuclear Physics and Computer Physics Communications, North Holland.

For his fundamental contributions to determining the structure of light nuclei by solving the Schrödinger problem with more than three nucleons using realistic nucleon-nucleon interactions supplemented by three-body forces, Professor Pandharipande received the prestigious Tom W. Bonner prize of the American Physical Society in 1999.

His towering intellect, deep physical insight, and gentle and self-effacing human kindness will be greatly missed.