George Zaslavsky
Department of Physics and Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University, NY
Featured Author: George Zaslavsky
Dr. George Zaslavsky (May 31, 1935 - Nov. 25, 2008) was a Soviet mathematical physicist and widely regarded as one of the founders of the physics of dynamical chaos. He was born in Odessa (Ukraine, former USSR), and obtained his Masters from Odessa State University. He earned a Ph.D. in 1964 and a Russian Doctoral degree in 1973. From 1964 until 1970, Zaslavsky worked in the Institute of Nuclear Physics at Novosibirsk, and then moved to the the Institute of Physics in Krasnoyarsk, where he remained for fourteen years. In 1984 he was appointed Head of the Dynamical Systems Group of the Space Research Institute in Moscow, where he stayed until 1991 when he left the USSR for the University of California at Santa Barbara (USA). He later joined the New York University Department of Physics and Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences as a Professor of Physics and Mathematics in the year 1992. He has been a recipient of a Doctorate honoris causa from Aix-Marseilles University.
Dr. Zaslavsky's contributions include the construction of the Separatrix map and the discovery of stochastic webs with crystal and quasi-crystal symmetry. Dr. Zaslavsky also worked on the Dissipative standard map and the logarithmic time of the validity of semiclassical approximation in quantum chaos (Ehrenfest time). He made significant contributions in anomalous kinetics and fraction dynamics (fractional generalization of the Fokker-Planck equation).
Dr. Zaslavsky authored and co-authored more than 300 published papers and nine books. He seminal works continue to influence the current research in nonlinear science.
Scholarpedia articles:
- Zaslavsky map, Scholarpedia, 2(5):2662 (2007)
- Zaslavsky web map, Scholarpedia, 2(10):3369(2007)
(Author profile by Biswa Sengupta)
