David Maurice BrinkFRS (20 July 1930,Hobart,Tasmania,Australia – 8 March 2021,Oxford, UK)[1][2] was an Australian-British nuclear physicist. He is known for the Axel-Brink hypothesis.[3]
Brink matriculated in 1947 at theUniversity of Tasmania, where he graduated with a B.Sc. in physics in 1951.[4] As a Rhodes Scholar he became a graduate student in physics atMagdalen College, Oxford, where he received his PhD in 1955.[4] His doctoral dissertationSome aspects of the interactions of light with matter[5] was supervised byMaurice Pryce.[6] From 1954 to 1958 Brink was a Rutherford Scholar of theRoyal Society.[1] For the academic year 1957–1958 he was an instructor at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). From 1958 to 1993 he was a Fellow ofBalliol College, Oxford. At the University of Oxford he was from 1958 to 1988 a university lecturer and from 1988 to 1993 a Moseley Reader.[4] In 1993 he moved toTrento, Italy. There from 1993 to 1998 he was the vice-director of the European Centre for Theoretical Studies in Nuclear Physics (under the auspices of theEuropean Centre of Technology), as well as, at theUniversity of Trento a professor of the history of physics.[1][4]
As a theoretical physicist he did important research on "the study of nuclear structure via theshell model and effective interactions, and nuclear reactions via statistical methods."[2]
He was interested in the physics ofgiant resonances and developed semi classical methods for heavy ion reactions which he used to explain the selectivity in the population of high angular momentum states in heavy ion transfer reactions and neutron transfer to bound states. His bookAngular momentum (withG.R. Satchler) is a classic introduction to the topic. For several years David had a very productive collaboration with Dominique Vautherin, Marcel Vénéroni and their colleagues at Orsay on the use of Skyrme's effective interaction forHartree-Fock calculations and, later, on the semi classical theory of collective motion in nuclei.[1]
He was elected in 1981 a Fellow of theRoyal Society.[7] He received in 1982 the Rutherford Medal of theInstitute of Physics. He was made in 1992 a Foreign Member of theRoyal Society of Sciences in Uppsala. In 2006 he received theLise Meitner Prize "for his many contributions to the theory of nuclear structure and nuclear reactions over several decades, including his seminal work on the theory of nuclear masses using Skyrme effective interactions, nuclear giant resonances, clustering in nuclei and quantum and semi-classical theories of heavy-ion scattering and reactions."[8]
Bloch, Claude, ed. (1966). "The alpha-particle model of light nuclei by D. M. Brink".Many-body description of nuclear structure and reactions: proceedings of the International School of Physics "Enrico Fermi": course XXXVI: Varenna on Lake Como, Villa Monastero, 26th July–14th August, 1965. Academic Press. pp. 247–276.
Jones, H. J.; Brink, D. M. (1967). "Angular distribution of gamma rays in terms of phase-defined reduced matrix elements".Reviews of Modern Physics.39 (2):306–347.Bibcode:1967RvMP...39..306R.doi:10.1103/RevModPhys.39.306. (over 950 citations)
Vautherin, D.; Brink, D. M. (1972). "Hartree-Fock Calculations with Skyrme's Interaction. I. Spherical Nuclei".Physical Review C.5 (3):626–647.Bibcode:1972PhRvC...5..626V.doi:10.1103/PhysRevC.5.626. (over 3050 citations)
Engel, Y.M.; Brink, D.M.; Goeke, K.; Krieger, S.J.; Vautherin, D. (1975). "Time-dependent hartree-fock theory with Skyrme's interaction".Nuclear Physics A.249 (2):215–238.Bibcode:1975NuPhA.249..215E.doi:10.1016/0375-9474(75)90184-0.
^abcde"CV David Brink - School of Physics & Astronomy".website of Ian James Douglas MacGregor, University of Glasgow, July 2012 (Click on "David Brink" for automatic download of CV to user's computer — the download will remain until the user deletes the downloaded file.).
