Nikos A. Salingaros - biographical note
Nikos A. Salingaros is professor of mathematics at the University of Texas at San Antonio. He studied with three physics Nobel Prize winners: Professor Paul Dirac in Miami, Professor Chen-Ning Yang in Stony Brook, and Professor S. Chandrasekhar in Chicago. He obtained a Ph. D. in theoretical physics from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, under the supervision of Professor Max Dresden. He has made contributions to mathematical physics, field theory, and thermonuclear fusion. The author of more than sixty scientific publications, he serves as associate editor for two journals, and referees for fourteen others. He has given over 100 invited seminars and conference talks internationally.
Dr. Salingaros is a participant in the search for controllable energy from thermonuclear fusion reactions. He worked on the IGNITEX reactor project as a member of the Center for Fusion Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, 1989-1991. In 1991, he was elected Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for his contributions to fusion. He was on the IEEE Policy Committee (the Sweeney Commission) that reviewed the fusion program in 1993 for the Energy Subcommittee of the U. S. House of Representatives. During 1991-1993, Dr. Salingaros was on leave at the Superconducting Super Collider in Dallas, and was adjunct professor at both Southern Methodist University and the University of Texas at Arlington. He was on the Steering Committee of the International Symposium on Evaluation of Current Trends in Fusion Research (whose Advisory Board and evaluators include Dr. Edward Teller, Dr. Glenn Seaborg, and Dr. Frederick Seitz). He has helped to organize the two conferences in this series, held in Washington DC in 1994 and in 1997. The results of the symposium have led so far to a radical re-alignement of the U.S. Fusion Program.
Dr. Salingaros is listed in Who's Who in Science and Engineering, in Who's Who in Frontiers of Science and Technology, and in American Men and Women of Science.
Since 1983, he has been learning from and working with the brilliant architectural theorist, Professor Christopher Alexander. This interaction has inspired an entirely new direction of research, which uses mathematics to describe aspects of nature that are regarded as being in the domain of art. These phenomena have so far eluded a scientific explanation. Dr. Salingaros is applying insights gained from complex physical systems to architecture. His latest publications combine ideas from complexity theory, fractals, and thermodynamics to develop a mathematical theory of structural form. The same ideas apply to architecture as well as to other topics in design; in particular, to Oriental Carpets. For his work in this area, Dr. Salingaros was invited to address the 8th International Conference on Oriental Carpets in Philadelphia, and to contribute articles to HALI, the world's foremost journal on Oriental Carpet studies.