John F. Dawson is a Professor of Physics at the University of New Hampshire. He was born in 1936 in Springfield, Ohio and grew up in Yellow Springs, Ohio where his father was on the faculty of Antioch College. He received his undergraduate degree from Antioch College in physics in 1958 and his Ph.D. in theoretical nuclear physics from Stanford University in 1962 under the direction of Professor J. D. Walecka. From 1962-64 he was a Research Associate at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. From 1964-65 he was a visiting Assistant Professor at Antioch College and in 1965-66 he taught at Oberlin College in Ohio. From 1966-68 he was a Research Associate at the University of Massachusetts in Lowell, Massachusetts, moving to the University of New Hampshire in 1968, where he has been since. He retired from teaching Spring, 2005, but still maintains an office at UNH. He has held visiting scientist positions at the Canadian Atomic Energy facility at Chalk River (1964), at the Institute of Theoretical Physics at Stanford University (1973), at Los Alamos National Laboratory (1979), at the Center for Theoretical Physics at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts (1979), at Oxford University, Oxford, England (1986-87), at the Nuclear Theory Center at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana (1987), and at the Institute for Nuclear Theory of the University of Washington, Seattle, Washington (1990). He is married to Sarah (Howell) Dawson and has one son, Michael, who lives with his wife Laurel in Port Townsend, Washington with his two granddaughters, Eliza Joy Dawson and Chloe Rose Dawson, and a grandson, Glen Ceder Dawson.
The main focus of his research has been on nuclear models, electron scattering, and heavy ion collisions. His work on non-relativistic nuclear models with I. Talmi and J. D. Walecka was one of the first attempts to calculate nuclear structure with hard-core potentials (1962). He worked on formal green's function methods in the nuclear many-body problem, and then on calculation of inelastic electron scattering form factors of nuclei and on nuclear structure. After spending some time on problems of the scattering of free electrons from laser light, and optical pumping problems, he then shifted focus to the relativistic nuclear field theory model of Walecka. He published two papers on relativistic RPA methods for the nuclear Walecka model and the problem of pion condensation in nuclei. He also worked on the development of the Hartree-Fock approach for finite nuclei using the Walecka model.
In the past several years, he has worked on dynamical problems in quantum field theories using large-N expansions, and on approximation methods in quantum mechanics and its relation to chaotic behavior. His work on oscillations of the quark-gluon plasma used these methods to study the behavior of unconfined quark matter produced by heavy ion collisions, such as would occure at RHIC or LEP. This was one of the first attempts to solve a dynamic non-abelian strongly coupled field theory in the large-N approximation. His work with Melissa Lampert (Tel Aviv) and Fred Cooper (LANL) on disoriented chiral condensation following the formation of a quark-gluon plasma was the first attempt to solve this problem in a spherical expansion in curved space.
Dr. Dawson has been involved in undergraduate as well as graduate teaching. He has taught, at one time or another, most of the courses offered in the department, but particularly enjoys courses in quantum physics. He has organized several graduate seminars in topics in theoretical nuclear physics, and has worked on organizing department colloquia. He has directed two doctoral theses in theoretical atomic and nuclear physics.
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