Dr. Roald Sagdeev

Dr. Roald Sagdeev is a Distinguished University Professor of the University of Maryland, College Park, and Director of the East West Space Science Center in the Department of Physics. After graduation from Moscow State University he became a member of the Controlled Fusion team at Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy in Moscow (1956-1961). In his early work he developed the kinetic theory of plasma in "drift" (guiding center) limit. That resulted in a discovery (coauthored with L. Rudakov) of instabilities of a plasma with anisotropic velocitydistribution: "diamagnetic" (mirror) and "centrifugal" (fire hose) made independently from Americans before the Fusion program was declassified. Direct extension of this work beyond drift approximation led soon to the formulation of the class of cyclotron ("pitch angle") instabilities (jointly with V. Shafranov). Later these results provided the basis for Kennel-Petchek model of the radiation belt dynamics and a mechanism of generation of Alfvén waves turbulence in Cosmic Ray Shocks. In 1960-1961 Sagdeev (in co-authorship with Rudakov) discovered a new mode of plasma waves in non-uniform plasmas: drift waves (non- Zero kz <