Walter Greiner
Walter Greiner passed away on 5 October 2016 in his home in Kelkheim, Taunus, Germany, after a long and painful illness. He was born on 19 October 1935 in Neuenbau/Thueringen, Germany (former East Germany). He is survived by his wife and two sons, who are university professors of physics.
Walter received a BSc in 1958 from University of Frankfurt am Main, MSc in 1960 from TH Darmstadt, and PhD in 1961 from University of Freiburg. From 1965 to 1995 he was professor of physics, chair for theoretical physics, and director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt. In 1976 he became permanent consultant to Gesellshaft fuer Schwerionenforschung (GSI) Darmstadt. He was also dean of the Physics Faculty of Johann Wolfgang Goethe University for part of 2001 and 2002. Since 2003 he was director of the newly founded Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies.
Walter was one of the young German physicists who re-established physics and particularly nuclear physics in Germany after World War II. He understood that only by a joint effort of theorists and experimentalists can we explain, predict, or discover new physics phenomena. He played an important role in establishing the GSI Darmstadt and has been associated with it through the years. Some other renowned research centers in the world also benefitted from his innovative ideas, like SPS and the LHC of CERN, RHIC in Brookhaven, and BEVALAC in Berkeley. His institute was and continues to be a place where scientists from different European countries and all continents come together. Important scientific conferences, summer schools, NATO Advanced Study Institutes, etc., were organized by Walter as chairman or director. In Frankfurt there were more than 187 “Diplomarbeit” and 141 PhD theses supervised by him.
He held guest professorships at 22 universities and national laboratories in the US, Canada, Russia, and Egypt.
He earned honorary doctoral degrees from the following universities: Witwatersrand, Johannesburg; Tel Aviv, Strasbourg; Bucharest; Debrecen, Nantes; Mexico City; St. Petersburg; Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Dubna: Bogoliubov Institute of Theoretical Physics, Kiev.
Honors and Awards: Max Born Prize and Medal; Otto Hahn Prize; First professor holding the Frankfurt chair, University of Tel Aviv; Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA), London; Honorary Member of Roland Eotvos Society of Hungary; Honorary Professor, University of Beijing and Jilin University; Honorary Membership, Romanian Academy; Alexander von Humboldt Medal; Officier dans l’Ordre Palmes Academiques; Member of Academia Gioenia di Catania.
He held editorial positions for seven journals in England, Italy, and Singapore.
Publications: more than 750 publications in international journals; about 400 invited lectures at international conferences. Fifteen volumes of lectures in Theoretical Physics, published in German and translated into English, Japanese, Chinese, and French (Springer Verlag, Berlin, London, New York, Tokyo). Other: 14 books published by Springer, North Holland, Plenum, World Scientific, Clarendon Press, and Walter de Gruyter. He is one of the most cited authors.
Walter’s remarkably productive life as a brilliant scientist devoted to theoretical nuclear science during the last four decades is an example of an unparalleled success story. Many new topics in nuclear structure, nuclear reactions, atomic physics, and particle physics were initiated by him. Some examples: Nuclear polarization in muonic atoms. Rotation-vibration model. Dynamic collective model of giant resonances. Eigenchannel theory of the S-matrix nuclear reactions. Superheavy nuclei, structure, stability against fission, alpha decay, and electron capture. Electronic structure of super-heavies. Theory of nuclear molecules, coupled channel formulation of nuclear molecular reactions. The two center shell model which is fundamental for all fission and fusion processes. Generalized collective model (Gneuss-Greiner model). Prediction of cold valley for fusion of superheavy elements. Prediction of cluster radioactivities. Calculations of PES exhibiting the cold valleys for fusion, cold fission bimodal fission, cluster radioactivities, and alpha decay. Quantum electrodynamics of strong fields, spontaneous pair creation, superheavy quasimolecules. Supercritical fields in other areas like gravitation (Hawking radiation) and strong color fields. The prediction of nuclear shock waves as a key mechanism for compressing and heating nuclear matter. This work initiated high-energy nuclear physics: Search for the nuclear equation of state and possible phase transitions. Antimatter clusters emitted from a quark gluon plasma. Meson field theory for hot and dense nuclear matter, phase transition, chiral restoration. Meson field theory applied to nuclei and exotic objects, e.g. multi-Lambda-nuclei. Relativistic fluid dynamics for high-energy heavy-ion collisions. Antimatter production in thermal meson field theory. Quantum molecular dynamics applied to nuclear collisions. Relativistic quantum molecular dynamics. Antiflow of pions and antimatter. Quark–gluon plasma as a cluster plasma. Extension of the periodic system into the new directions of strangeness and antimatter. Structure of the baryonic and mesonic vacuum of high densities and temperature. A new mechanism for cold compression of elementary matter by implantation of high-energy antiprotons in nuclei.
No one has made so many significant contributions in so many different areas of nuclear, atomic, and particle physics. His seminal ideas concerning superheavy nuclei have had enormous impacts on the development and progress of heavy ion physics in Germany (GSI) and worldwide. He has set new directions that will carry us many years into the next decades. Walter founded a new institute of research: the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS).
Walter was very supportive of international scientific cooperation, having cooperations with many scientists from the US, Russia, China, India, Romania, Hungary, etc., and he organized many international conferences. The last 10 years he was chairman of the program advisory committee for nuclear physics of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Dubna. He will continue to be present in our hearts and in our minds through his many fundamental books and scientific papers.
