William H. Matthaeus

Biosketch

William H. Matthaeus, PhD is Martin A. Pomerantz Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Delaware. He received his BA degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1973, and a PhD from William and Mary in 1979. He was NRC Postdoctoral Research Associate at Goddard Space Flight Center from 1980-1982. In 1983 he joined the faculty at the Bartol Research Institute. Following merger with the University of Delaware, he joined the Department of Physics and Astronomy, becoming Full Professor in 2005 and appointed Unidel Professor of Physics and Astronomy in 2016. He is a recipient of the American Geophysical Union James B. Macelwane Award, the Delaware Arts & Sciences Scholarship Award, and a Fulbright Specialist award. In 2018 he received the Ruth Gall Prize sponsored by ALAGE, and in 2019 received the James Clerk Maxwell Prize in Plasma Physics from the APS. In 2020 Mahidol University awarded him an Honorary Doctorate. He is Fellow of the American Physical Society, the Institute of Physics, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Association for Advancement of Science. He is Director of the Delaware NASA Space Grant and the Delaware NASA EPSCoR program, and Co-investigator on current and upcoming spacecraft missions, including Cluster/PEACE, the Magnetospheric Multiscale mission, the Parker Solar Probe ISOIS instruments, the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe, PUNCH and Helioswarm. He has organized the annual Arcetri Workshop on Plasma Astrophysics since 2006.

Research Interests

William H. Matthaeus studies turbulence theory, plasma physics, fluid mechanics, magnetohydrodynamics and statistical mechanics, with applications in space physics and transport and energization of charged particles in heliospheric plasmas. He employs analytical, computational and observational methods to study turbulence along with associated complex kinetic plasma physics response, lead to dissipation and heating. He developed novel approaches in data analysis and computational methods. Turbulence effects in solar wind dynamics, and on magnetic reconnection, have become standard in space plasmas. He studied anisotropy associated with large-scale magnetic fields, with influences on fundamental description of solar wind processes. He contributed to advances in theory of energetic charged particle scattering, transport and diffusion in magnetized plasma with applications to solar and galactic particle propagation. He developed theories of coronal heating and solar wind acceleration involving reflection-driven, non-WKB transport of low-frequency turbulence, approaches widely-used in models of large-scale heliospheric dynamics. He launched the sub-discipline of “Nearly Incompressible” MHD theory and the study of “1/f noise” with application to solar wind studies. His advances in MHD modeling led to election to APS Fellowship in the Division of Computational Physics. His recent study of cascade in collisionless Vlasov turbulence led to his receiving the 2019 APS Maxwell Prize and 2023 Fellowship in the AAAS.