Laura Smilowitz
Laura Beth Smilowitz is an American physicist known for her development of technology that can record x-ray movies of explosions at high frame rates,[1][2] and for shooting high explosives with lasers in order to synchronize their explosions with their recordings.[3] She is a researcher at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where she heads the Weapons Chemistry team in the Physical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy group.[4]
Education and career[edit]
Smilowitz graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1987, with a bachelor's degree in physics,[5] and completed a Ph.D. in physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1993. After postdoctoral research at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and Brandeis University, she became a permanent staff member at Los Alamos in 1999.[4]
Recognition[edit]
In 2017, Smilowitz was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS), after a nomination from the APS Topical Group on Shock Compression of Condensed Matter, "for pioneering radiography to study thermal explosions, including the development of both a scaled table-top dynamic radiographic facility capable of producing continuous X-ray movies of high speed events, and the triggering techniques required to observe the spontaneous onset of a thermal explosion".[1] In the same year, she was also named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.[4] She was named a Fellow of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in 2019.[3]
References[edit]
- ^ a b "Fellows nominated in 2017 by the Topical Group on Shock Compression of Condensed Matter", APS Fellows archive, American Physical Society, retrieved 2021-01-25
- ^ "X-rays reveal the anatomy of an explosion", Research highlights, Nature, 551 (7680): 275, 9 November 2017, doi:10.1038/d41586-017-05797-w, PMID 32080560, S2CID 4467759
- ^ a b Seven Los Alamos scientists and engineers honored as 2019 Laboratory Fellows, Los Alamos National Laboratory, 16 October 2019, retrieved 2021-01-25
- ^ a b c Laura Smilowitz Named Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Los Alamos National Laboratory, 2017, retrieved 2021-01-25
- ^ "List of Graduates (1927–2018)", Department of Physics, Bryn Mawr College, retrieved 2021-01-25
- Living people
- American physicists
- American women physicists
- Bryn Mawr College alumni
- University of California, Santa Barbara alumni
- Los Alamos National Laboratory personnel
- Fellows of the American Physical Society
- Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
- 21st-century American women