Biographical Memoir of Ken Case

Abstract

An overview of Case's life and professional accomplishments is presented. The topics include his early years and his time at Harvard, Los Alamos, the Institute for Advanced Study, the Universities of Rochester and Michigan, and the University of California–San Diego Institute for Nonlinear Studies, as well as his membership in Jason. The contributions from a number of his publications are described.

Keywords:

• Ken Case
• Case's method
• linear transport theory
• transport theory history
• eigenmode expansions

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We are grateful to a number of individuals for discussions about Case's contributions to physics. These include E. G. D. Cohen, Mitchell Feigenbaum, and Nicola Khuri, colleagues of Ken's at Rockefeller, as well as Ray Aronson, Noel Corngold, Norman Francis, Roy Glauber, Edward Larsen, the late Eugen Merzbacher, and John Wilkerson. One of us (PZ) wants the world to know what a good friend Ken was, and how kindly he treated me through the years, like the big brother I never had. Our families were often together, in Ann Arbor, Princeton, New York, Blacksburg, and La Jolla. Ken did everything to promote my professional career; without his support I would have had much less success. One of us (NM) is honored to have had Ken serve on my PhD supervisory committee at the University of Michigan.