| Description | Ping Yang, Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Atmospheric Sciences and
Department of Physics & Astronomy
Texas A&M University
Atmospheric Optics and Radiation: History,
Application, and Inspiration
This talk is intended mainly for young scientists, particularly, undergraduate and graduate students. Elastic electromagnetic scattering and the transfer of radiation are two important branches of applied physics, which are also fundamental to many other disciplines such as
atmospheric remote sensing, bio-optics, and astrophysics. In this talk, I will review the history and evolution of these topics. Specifically, I will review the contributions by Clebsch, Lorenz, and Mie to the early
development of the theory of light scattering by a sphere, and some recent developments in the numerical approaches (e.g., the DDA, FDTD
and ray-tracing methods) for solving for the optical properties of nonspherical and inhomogeneous particles, as well as research efforts on the relevant applications to atmospheric remote sensing. In the review of
the development of radiative transfer theory, we will focus on the early contributions by Lommel, Chwolson, Schuster, Eddington, Ambartsumian,
Sobolev, and Chandrasekhar, just to mention a few. Especially, I will review Chandrasekhar's academic career and tremendous achievements. I
hope that, after the talk, the students in the audience would be inspired by Chandrasekhar's legendary academic achievements and his dedication
to science.
For more information, please contact: Dr. Anzhong Wang 254-710-2276 |
