After receiving an SB degree in physics from MIT in 1952, I worked as an engineer for five years, designing traveling-wave tubes and backward-wave oscillators, and then transistor amplifier circuits. In 1957 I received an SM degree from MIT in engineering, and in 1961 an ScD degree in electrical engineering. Since 1960, my professional life has been devoted to theoretical and experimental studies of nonlinear dynamics. Although there were precursors, this interest began in earnest during a theoretical and experimental doctoral thesis on the dynamics of Esaki (tunnel) junctions with very large surface area. I made these devices during the summer of 1960 at Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey using a newly-developed process of liquid-phase epitaxy. In the course of this research, it became evident that such systems are poorly described by linear models but can be represented by the simple nonlinear diffusion equation, which describes a candle flame (pdf 85 KB) and also predicts the speed of nerve impulse.

As a faculty member in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the University of Wisconsin from 1962 to 1981, I supervised laboratory work and conducted corresponding theoretical studies on active solid-state devices, including neuristors (pdf 21 KB) and Josephson (superconducting) transmission lines (which respectively support the emergence of waves of permanent profile and solitons (pdf 59 KB),) and semiconductor laser diodes (which are examples of distributed oscillators (pdf 74 KB)). During these Wisconsin years, I wrote a textbook on nonlinear dynamics, developed an interdisciplinary course in nonlinear wave propagation, became a member of both the UW Mathematics Research Center and the UW Neuroscience Program, and developed an interdisciplinary course (with textbook) in neuroscience.

The 1965-66 academic year was spent at the Institute of Applied Physics of the University of Bern, Switzerland, working on the theory and experimental development of semiconductor laser diodes. It was in Bern in the spring of 1966 that I first became aware that the dynamics of magnetic flux propagation on Josephson (superconducting) transmission lines (JTLs) are described by the sine-Gordon (SG) equation--a discovery that had a profound influence on the subsequent course of my research. The 1969-70 AY and each summer during the 1970s were spent at the Laboratorio di Cibernetica near Naples, Italy, studying the SG equation and fabricating long Josephson junctions. In 1978, David McLaughlin and I cowrote a widely cited paper on the application of soliton theory to analyze magnetic flux dynamics on long JTLs which are modeled by a perturbed SG equation (pdf 1.8MB). During the 1979-80 AY I was supported by a European Molecular Biology Organization Fellowship at the Stazione Zoologica in Naples, conducting experimental studies of the interactions of nerve impulses near branching regions of squid giant axons.

In 1981, I was chosen as the founding director of the Center for Nonlinear Studies (pdf 773 KB) at the Los Alamos National Laboratories and became a founding editor of Physica D: Nonlinear Science. My research during the mid-1980s comprised theoretical studies of soliton propagation on proteins (pdf 2.1 MB) , experimental studies of nonlinear localization of vibrational energy on a model protein called acetanilide (pdf 1 MB) (ACN), and the formulation and study of the discrete self-trapping (DST) equation, which has received many citations (pdf 91 KB) as a description of energy localization on small molecules and other nonlinear dynamical systems with finite numbers of freedoms.

In 1985, I moved to the University of Arizona (Tucson) to become a half-time Professor of Physics and Mathematics, where I continued work on ACN (pdf 220 KB). (Shortly after arriving in Tucson, I was involved in an unfortunate accident, which has been described as an example of the butterfly effect. ) During these Arizona years, the other half of my time was as a Professor of Applied Mathematics at the Technical University of Denmark, where I taught nonlinear science and studied the quantum theory of lattice solitons (pdf 881 KB) as a basis for understanding the propagation of solitons on biopolymers. I was also an active participant in the UA Neuroscience Program and in the UA Program in Applied Mathematics.

I am currently engaged with the following activities.

• Promotion of The Encyclopedia of Nonlinear Science, (see below for more details).
• Serving as Chairman of the Awards Committee for the International Stephanos Pnevmatikos Award for research in Nonlinear Science.
• Serving on the Scientific Committee of the Arthur T. Winfree Foundation for Interdisciplinary Studies.
• Working on a book to be entitled THE NONLINEAR UNIVERSE: Chaos, Emergence, Life for the FRONTIERS IN SCIENCE series of Springer-Heidelberg. This book will be published early in 2007.

RECENT BOOKS:


A.C. Scott (editor), The Encyclopedia of Nonlinear Science, Routledge, New York, 2005 (typos). Comprising 438 essays arranged alphabetically in one large volume, this Encyclopedia covers subjects such as chaos and turbulence in addition to the formation (emergence) and dynamics of coherent structure (solitons, nerve impulses, shock waves, tornados, and so on). Entries describe basic phenomena that arise in mathematics; theoretical and applied physics; chemistry; physical chemistry; electrical, chemical, and mechanical engineering; atmospheric and earth sciences; biology; economics; and neuroscience; among several others. Some of the entries are theoretical in nature, while others present phenomena in intuitive terms, but all are introductory, leading the reader toward further insights in the are of interest. For more information on the scope of this work, read the preface and recent book reviews in SIAM Review (pdf 252 KB), The Journal of Consciousness Studies (pdf 48 KB), CHOICE (pdf 204 KB), Il Nuovo Saggiatore (pdf 204 KB), and Boletin (pdf 1.2 MB), view a collection of color images (pdf 2.2 MB), look at a promotional flier (pdf 180 KB) or listen to an interview on nonlinear science.










A.C. Scott, Nonlinear Science: Emergence and Dynamics of Coherent Structures, Second edition, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003 (typos). In addition to looking at the preface (pdf 134 KB), the first (pdf 244 KB) and last (pdf 78 KB) chapters can be read together as an essay on the history and future of research in nonlinear science. A review (pdf 147 KB) of the first edition has appeared in SIAM REVIEW and a review of the second edition is available on Amazon. Browse sample pages.










A.C. Scott, Neuroscience: A Mathematical Primer, Springer-Verlag, New York, 2002 (typos). As indicated in the preface (pdf 169 KB), this book springs from my long-held conviction that there should be a better working relationship between the fields of neuroscience and applied mathematics. A review (pdf 15 KB) has appeared in Current Science and another review has recently appeared on Amazon.










A.C. Scott, Stairway to the Mind, Springer-Verlag (Copernicus), New York (1995). (One typo in second printing.) Written for the general reader who is interested in the nature of the human mind, this book received favorable reviews and was a "Main Selection" of the Newbridge Library of Science. Translations have been published in Japan (1997), Italy (1998) (pdf 16 KB), and Poland (1999). See also a "review essay" by Willis Harman and browse sample pages.








MAJOR REVIEW PAPERS:

• A.C. Scott, F.Y.F. Chu and D.W. McLaughlin, The soliton: A new concept in applied science, Proc. IEEE 61 (1973) 1443-1483. This was judged a citation classic (pdf 100 KB) by the Institute for Scientific Information in 1979, and it has been republished in the series: Selected Papers in Physics by the Physical Society of Japan in 1981.
  
• A.C. Scott, The electrophysics of a nerve, Rev. Mod. Phys. 47 (1975) 487-533. Republished in Biological Physics: Key Papers in Physics, E.V. Mielczarek, E. Greenbaum and R.S. Knox, eds., American Institute of Physics (1993).
  
• A.C. Scott, Davydov's soliton, Physics Reports 217 (1992) 1-67.
• A.C. Scott, The development of nonlinear science, La Rivista del Nuovo Cimento 27 (10-11) 2004 1-115.
• Sent me an email request (to ), and I'll send pdf versions of these review articles to you.

• A. Benabdallah, J.G. Caputo and A.C. Scott, Laminar phase flow for an exponentially tapered Josephson oscillator (pdf 277 KB), J. Appl. Phys. 88 (No. 6) (2000) 3527-3540.
  
• O.V. Aslanidi, O.V. Mornev, O. Skyggebjerg, P. Arkhammer, O. Thastrup, M.P Soerensen, P.L. Christiansen, K. Conradsen and A.C. Scott, Excitation wave propagation as a possible mechanism of signal transmission in pancreatic islets of Langerhans (pdf 262 KB), Biophysical Journal 80 (2001) 1195-1209.
  
• S. Binczak, J.C. Eilbeck and A.C. Scott, Ephaptic coupling of myelinated nerve fibers (pdf 207 KB), Physica D 148 (2001) 159-174.
  
• J. Edler, P. Hamm and A.C. Scott, Femtosecond study of self-trapped excitons in crystalline acetanilide (pdf 159 KB), Phys. Rev. Lett. 88 (2002) 067403-1-067403-4.
  
• H.K. Ebraheem, J.L. Shohet, and A.C. Scott, Mode locking in reversed-field pinch experiments (pdf 116 KB), Phys. Rev. Lett. 88 (2002) 235003.
  
• J.L. Shohet, B.R. Barmish, H.K. Ebraheem, and A.C. Scott, The sine-Gordon equation in reversed-field pinch experiments (pdf 484 KB), Physics of Plasmas, 11 (2004) 3877--3887.
• J. Dorignac, J.C. Eilbeck, M. Salerno, and A.C. Scott, Quantum signatures of breather-breather interactions (pdf 112 KB), Phys. Rev. Lett. 93(2) (9 July 2004) 025504-1.

• A.C. Scott, On quantum theories of the mind (pdf 150 KB), Journal of Consciousness Sudies, 3 (No. 5-6) (1996) 484-491. For other points of view see a rebuttal by Henry Stapp (pdf 140 KB) and support from a paper by Max Tegmark (pdf 456 KB).
• A.C. Scott, We could be siblings yet (pdf 51 KB). A review of Why Religion Matters by Houston Smith. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 8 (No. 9-10) (2001) 161-166.
• A.C. Scott, Reductionism revisited (pdf 121 KB), Journal of Consciousness Studies,11 (No. 2) (2004) 51-68.

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