UMaine Professor Honored by American
Physical Society
Jan. 10, 2006
Contact: Joe Carr at (207) 581-3571
ORONO -- University of Maine Professor of Chemistry Jayendran C. Rasaiah
has been elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS).
Rasaiah, who also is a cooperating professor of physics at UMaine,
specializes in physical, theoretical and computational chemistry and
chemical physics. He was cited by APS for his "pioneering contributions to
fundamental electrolyte theory, the thermodynamics of polar fluids, the
transport of ions in polar solvents and water through carbon nanotubes,
and studies of water in nonpolar cavities."
The society's fellowship program recognizes members who make advances in
knowledge through original research and publication, or made significant
and innovative contributions in the application of physics to science and
technology. They also are recognized for contributions to the teaching of
physics and for their APS activities. Each year, no more than one-half of
1 percent of the society's membership is recognized by their peers for
fellowship status.
Rasaiah joined the UMaine faculty in 1969. Twice he was a guest scientist
at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and in 2000, was a
visiting scientist at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In 1981, he
was a visiting professor at the University of New South Wales and, in
previous years, a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University
and Science Research Council Fellow at Oxford University.
His multidisciplinary research interests include theoretical and computer
simulation studies of the structure and dynamics of liquids and
electrolyte solutions, the thermodynamics of polar fluids, the mobility of
ions in solutions and in channels and water permeation of carbon nanotubes
and cavities. His early theoretical contributions to electrolyte solutions
and polar fluids, done in collaboration with Professors Harold Friedman
and George Stell at Stony Brook, are widely cited in textbooks and
journals, and used extensively by scientists and engineers working in
these fields.
Letters from his peers state that Rasaiah "has sought and solved some of
the really substantial problems in the statistical mechanics of
electrolyte solutions and more recently in liquids with polar molecules.
His work is of very high quality, and has rightly given him an
international reputation."
"There is no question about the importance of Rasaiah's work; it is very
significant and of excellent quality."
Rasaiah's studies of ion mobility in water, with graduate student S.
Koneshan and Professor Ruth Lynden-Bell, then at Queens University in
Belfast U.K, helped explain a long-standing problem on the size and charge
dependence of the transport of ions in solution.
His most recent research findings, published in Nature and Proceedings of
the National Academy, were done in collaboration with colleague Gerhard
Hummer of NIH, postdoctoral Fellow Jerzey P. Noworyta and graduate
students (Aparna Waghe, Subramanium Vaitheeswaran and Hao Yin). They used
computer simulations to discover how water molecules are transported
through partially confined systems, such as carbon nanotubes, and to
explore water clusters in nonpolar cavities. He and his students (Vaitheeswaran
and Yin) have also used molecular dynamics simulations to study surface
wetting and phase transitions of thin films of water between plates in an
electric field.
Rasaiah's research was supported by grants from the National Science
Foundation.
