Russell J. Donnelly

Donnelly graduated from McMaster University with a bachelor's degree in 1951 and a master's degree in 1952.[1] In 1956 he received his doctorate from Yale University, with a thesis entitled "On the hydrodynamics of liquid helium". His doctoral advisers were the noted physicists C. T. Lane and Lars Onsager.[4] His PhD work demonstrated that the oscillations of liquid helium in a U-tube at a low temperature could be described by two-phase liquid theory.[1]

In 1956 he became an instructor and later professor at the James Franck Institute at the University of Chicago, where he worked with S. Chandrasekhar and Dave Fultz. From 1959 - 1963 he was Sloan Fellow. In 1966 he moved to the University of Oregon,[1] where it was possible for both himself and his wife, art historian Marian Donnelly, to hold positions.[4] He eventually served twice as department chair at the University of Oregon.[1] In 1972 he worked at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen. He was also a visiting professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara and the University of Birmingham. He was a consultant at NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.[4]

During his life he advised 25 PhD students, and mentored many others, including future Nobel prize winner David Lee.[1] He died from pneumonia on 13 June 2015 in Eugene, Oregon.[1][5]

• 2002, Fritz London Memorial Prize, International Union of Pure and Applied Physics[6]
• 2001, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences[7]
• 2001, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science[8]
• 1999, Honorary doctorate, McMaster University[9]
• 1996, Lars Onsager Medal, Norwegian University of Science and Technology[10]
• 1975, Otto Laporte Award, Division of Fluid Dynamics, American Physical Society[11]
• 1963, Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS)[12]
• Fellow of the Institute of Physics