Fusion Pioneer John Lawson Passes, Age 84

摘要

John D. Lawson, who began his career in 1941, died in his home country of England on January 15. He was noted for his 1955 paper, published in 1957, "Some Criteria for a Power Producing Thermonuclear Reactor," (Proc. Phys. Soc. Vol. 70, pt. 1, no. 445, B, 6-10, 1957). Lawson showed that in order to achieve net power from a conventional electric power plant, the fusion plasma must be sustained at or above a temperature of about 5 keV such that the product of its density and confinement time exceed a certain value. Since then, the goal of all fusion research has been to exceed this density-confinement time product in an experimental facility. To date, no experiment has achieved this product at the required temperature, though systematic advances towards it continue.