Ravindra Nath Sudan

RAVINDRA NATH
SUDAN
June 8, 1931 -
January 22, 2009
ITHACA - Dr. Ravindra Nath Sudan, a leader in the field of plasma physics and IBM Professor of Engineering Emeritus at Cornell University, died suddenly January 22, in St. Petersburg, Florida. The cause of death was congestive heart failure, a complication of cardiovascular disease. Born June 8, 1931 in Chinani, India, Dr. Sudan was the second son of Dr. Brahman Nath and Shanti Devi Sudan. After earning his B.A. from the University of Punjab in 1948 and his D.I.I.Sci. from Bangalore in 1952, he moved to England on a Tata Fellowship to work on his Ph.D. at Imperial College, University of London, which he completed in 1955. He emigrated to the United States in 1958 to accept a faculty position at Cornell University in electrical engineering, later becoming the IBM Chair of Engineering and Director of the Laboratory of Plasma Studies (LPS) from 1975-85. Dr. Sudan held many visiting positions and guest lectureships in England, Italy, the former Soviet Union, France, West Germany, Japan and other parts of the U.S., although Cornell always remained his home base. He served in several key administrative positions both at Cornell where he was co-founder with Ken Wilson of the Theory Center and from 1985-87 its deputy director, and at the US Naval Research Laboratory as head of theoretical plasma physics from 1970-71. In 1989 the American Physical Society awarded Dr. Sudan the prestigious James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics, and in 1994 the Academy of Science of the Czech Republic awarded him the Gold Medal for Physical Sciences. Dr. Sudan's first major contribution to plasma physics was the independent discovery (1963) of the "whistler instability" which subsequently was shown to be the physical mechanism causing very low frequency radio-emissions from the magnetosphere. Later research included important contributions to the theory of plasma stability and turbulence, and pioneering work on the generation and propagation of ion beams. Perhaps, however, his favorite moment of recognition came at the Maxwell Prize ceremony when many former graduate students fondly teased him, reminding him of his famously awkward moment with the press when there was an oil spill from an LPS laboratory: "If you're going to cook, you're going to spill a little milk." He was a dedicated colleague, a committed advisor to his many graduate students, and a devoted and loving husband and father. He is survived by his wife of 49 years, Dipali; his daughter, Rajani; his son and daughter-in-law, Ranjeet and Melissa; and his two grandchildren, Anil and Anjali Sudan. We love you and miss you already. Funeral services will be held on Wednesday, January 28, at 2:00 p.m. at Bangs Funeral Home, 209 W. Green St. in Ithaca.