William Klink, Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus
Biography

Research Interests: 

Theoretical nuclear physics; mathematical physics.

Research: 

  • Primary research area is the application of group theory to relativistic quantum mechanics
  • Topics include: representation theory of groups, applied to relativistic nuclear theory and quantum field theory

Research areas

  • Mathematical Physics
  • Nuclear and Particle Physics

From the time I retired in Dec. 2009 until I was diagnosed with lung cancer in May, 2018 I wrote two books, published 10 articles and conference proceedings, though I did not go to any conferences myself.  The two books are titled “Relativity, Symmetry, and the Structure of Quantum Theory”, the first volume dealing with nonrelativistic quantum theory and co-authored with Sujeev Wickramesekara, formerly of Grinnell College;  the second volume, dealing with a form of relativistic quantum theory called point form relativistic quantum theory is co-authored with Wolfgang Schweiger of Karl Franzen’s University in Graz. Austria.  The articles are of two sorts, one dealing with accelerated quantum systems and their associated fictitious  forces, published in Phys Rev Letters and Annals of Physics and co-authored with Wickramesekara.  The second deal with applications of the point form to hadronic form factors, are published in Phys Rev C and Few Body Systems, and co-authored with Schweiger and his students.

While I did not do any research during my cancer treatments, since being declared cancer free I have started doing research again, mainly with Schweiger on grounding relativistic quantum theory on creation and annihilation operators, rather than quantum fields.  We have several papers in preparation and I gave a seminar on the subject in Math-Physics this past fall.  I am also collaborating with a former physics graduate student, Yohannes Abate, who is now at the Univ of Georgia, on treating viruses as quantum mechanical objects;  we are now writing a first paper on the subject.  Finally, I have written a paper on panpsychism and the quantum measurement problem, which is considerably more speculative.

      William Klink
      Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University, 1964
      Office
      Address

      351 Van Allen Hall (VAN)
      Iowa City, IA 52242
      United States