Dawson, John Myrick

▪ 2002

      American physicist (b. Sept. 30, 1930, Champaign, Ill.—d. Nov. 17, 2001, Los Angeles, Calif.), was one of the world's foremost authorities on plasma physics. Dawson was known for his development of the so-called particle-in-cell computer model, a technique for simulating plasmas on computers; he was also the first to suggest using plasma in particle accelerators in order to make them more powerful without increasing their size. Dawson was educated at the University of Maryland at College Park, where he earned bachelor's (1952) and doctorate (1957) degrees. He was a research physicist at Princeton University from 1956 to 1962 and a professor of physics at the University of California, Los Angeles, from 1973 until his death. Dawson, who published more than 300 papers on plasma physics, was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1977.

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