Obituary: Marvin D. Girardeau (1930-2015)
Marvin Girardeau, a research professor of Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona, died on 13 January 2015, at his home in Arizona. He was a mathematical physicist with an unusual nonlinear career, which culminated in a remarkable impact in the ultracold atom physics community.
He is best known for introducing, in 1960, an exactly solvable model describing hard-core bosons in one dimension that effectively mimic polarized fermions. This and following works had a direct impact in the fields of foundations of quantum mechanics and many-body theory, as they clearly illuminated that quantum exchange statistics in one-dimension is ill-defined as an isolated concept and inextricably linked with interparticle interactions! This model, known as Tonks-Girardeau gas after Marvin, ignited an avalanche of studies of “beautiful” solvable many-body models, but it only found its way into the laboratory almost half a century later.
Marvin Girardeau was born on 10 March 1930 in Lakewood, Ohio. Marvin was a creative mind since early on. As a teenager, he was an avid chemistry experimenter and succeeded among other things in synthesizing nitroglycerine.
After earning his PhD in 1958 at Syracuse University, Marvin was invited by J. Robert Oppenheimer to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. In following, he worked with Eugene P. Gross in Brandeis University (1959-1960), in Boeing Scientific Research Laboratories (1960-1961), and with Gregor Wentzel in University of Chicago (1961-1963). In 1963, he joined the University of Oregon as an assistant professor, where he was promoted to full professor in 1967. He retired from the University of Oregon in 1995, becoming a professor emeritus, and worked as a research professor at the University of Arizona in 2000. Marvin went to sabbatical leaves to Universities of Bruxelles, Toulouse and Nice, not only for pure science, but also for his linguistic and historic interest in French, as Girardeau’s surname came from Huguenot French ancestors.
His career is unusual in that it received a major boost during his emeritus appointment. A decisive factor was the experimental realization of Bose-Einstein condensation of ultracold alkaline atoms in 1995 by Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman at the University of Colorado at Boulder NIST-JILA lab, and Wolfang Ketterle at MIT soon after. Three years later, Maxim Olshanii demonstrated that scattering of atoms in tight waveguides has a resonant behavior, realizing the Lieb-Liniger model, discovered in 1963, which consists of one-dimensional bosons with finite-strength contact-interactions. At the resonance, when interaction strength between atoms becomes infinite, the Tonks-Girardeau regime, introduced by Marvin in 1960, is reached. This insight paved the way for an experimental realization of the Tonks-Girardeau gas, as well as the super-Tonks-Girardeau gas, a related model with even stronger quantum correlations. A series of laboratories around the world succeeded in doing so soon after. As a result, the Tonks-Girardeau regime became a paradigmatic reference system for understanding low-dimensional strongly-correlated quantum fluids. Less predictably, it turned out to be an ideal test-bench for developing our understanding of isolated quantum systems, their thermalization dynamics, and ultimately, the foundations of statistical mechanics. Marvin Girardeau’s contributions inspired a large number of colleagues; as a sign of recognition, they later named the Girardeau-Arnowitt theory—developed, in the context of liquid Helium, in the late 50’s, together with Richard Arnowitt—the Tonks-Girardeau gas, the fermionic Tonks-Girardeau gas (with the wave function obtained by Girardeau mapping from ideal Bose gas), the super Tonks-Girardeau gas, and the Girardeau’s isomorphism after him.
In the wake of this experimental revolution, the productivity of Marvin grew exponentially. Indeed, in the last couple of decades he introduced a plethora of exactly solvable models exploiting and extending his early insight dating back to 1960. His solid reputation was accompanied by memorable and endearing gestures of enthusiasm and even in his late seventies he would not hesitate to take part in late poster sessions at conferences. He officially retired in 2010 and a conference was held in Menorca (Spain) to celebrate his eightieth birthday and honor his career and contributions. Even then, after retirement he remained active as a researcher.
Marvin was named Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1978. He won a Humboldt prize in 1984; his 1984-86 tenure at the Max Planck Institut für Strahlenchemie, Mühlheim/Ruhr, Germany, followed. In 2013, Marvin was nominated for a prestigious Senior BEC Award by the European Community.
Marvin was always conscious of the relevance of his work on strongly correlated gases to national defense. During the emeritus stage of his career, he led an Office of the Naval Research project in 1998-2008 and an Army Research Office project in 2009-2012.
Those who had the pleasure to meet him might have been struck by his singular energy and enthusiasm. Admirably, he preserved the curiosity of a 12 years-old child throughout his entire career. But his interests branched out from the realm of physics. For decades he was an enthusiastic marathon runner. He experimented with wine making and grape growing. His hobbies included astronomy, hiking, and choir singing.
It has been observed that when averaged over fifty years, Federico Fellini’s movies are watched as often as the most successful blockbusters. The same applies to Marvin Girardeau’s work on one-dimensional gases, with a lesson to the incoming generations to ensue: follow your heart; no matter how naive it may seem in the beginning, it will pay off at the end.
Marvin Girardeau is survived by his wife Susan, three daughters - Ellen, Catherine, Laura- and four grandchildren.
Adolfo del Campo (UMass Boston)
Gregori Astrakharchik (Polytechnic University of Catalonia)
Maxim Olshanii (UMass Boston)
