Daniel S. Koltun, a professor emeritus of physics at the URochester who made important contributions to the field of nuclear physics, died on April 9, 2014, in Haverford, Pa. He was 80.<\/p>\n
Koltun joined the University in 1962 and was a professor of physics until his retirement in 2004. A theoretical physicist, Koltun’s research interests and activities were largely focused on the study of nuclear structure and reactions at intermediate and high energy, as well as with many-body theory. He was interested in understanding the dynamics of nuclei as many-body systems, and the role of subnucleon constituents in this problem, including mesons \u2013 particularly pions \u2013 and quarks. In addition to being a leader in the meson physics community, Koltun was known for what is called the “Koltun Sum Rule” for the scattering of electrons from nuclear targets.<\/p>\n
Long associated with the scientific program of the Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility, he was a visiting staff member there for 18 years and served on its Program Advisory Committee.<\/p>\n
Koltun received an A.B. degree from Harvard University and earned his Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University. He was a visiting fellow at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, and at the Niels Bohr Institute, Denmark. He was also a visiting professor at Tel Aviv University (1976-77), and at the Hebrew University Jerusalem (1985), both in Israel. He had been awarded an NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. He was a fellow of the American Physical Society.<\/p>\n
Koltun was the coauthor, with the late Judah M. Eisenberg, of the books\u00a0Theory of Meson Interactions with Nuclei<\/i>\u00a0(1980) and\u00a0Quantum Mechanics of Many Degrees of Freedom<\/i>\u00a0(1988). He has also served as associate editor of the journals\u00a0Physical Review C<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0Physical Review Letters<\/i>.<\/p>\n
He is survived by his wife of 57 years, Judith; two children, Naomi Koltun-Fromm (Ken Koltun-Fromm) and Joshua (Chau); four grandchildren, Ariel, Talia and Isaiah Koltun-Fromm and Mila Koltun; and two sisters, Victoria Kelman (Rabbi Stuart Kelman) and Elizabeth Koltun.<\/p>\n
The University’s flag will be flown at half-mast on Thursday, April 24, in his memory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Theoretical physicist Daniel S. Koltun joined the University in 1962 and was a professor of physics until his retirement in 2004. In addition to being a leader in the meson physics community, Koltun was known for what is called the “Koltun Sum Rule” for the scattering of electrons from nuclear targets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":46552,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-university-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n