Mary Ann Sweeney (born 1945)[1] is an American physicist at Sandia National Laboratories. Although her doctoral research concerned astronomy, her work at Sandia has largely concerned inertial confinement fusion and pulsed power.[2]

Education and career

Sweeney is originally from Mercersburg, Pennsylvania; her parents moved to Baltimore when she was a teenager to improve their children's educational prospects. She majored in physics at Mount Holyoke College,[2] graduating in 1967[3] with a bachelor's thesis concerning white dwarf stars. She went to Columbia University for doctoral study but, unable to find a faculty member at Columbia who would take a female student for the topics that interested her, finished her doctorate at Columbia with an outside advisor from Princeton University.[2]

She married a fellow Columbia astronomy student and followed him to Albuquerque, where he had been assigned for his service in the United States Air Force. Seeking a science job nearby, Sweeney applied to work at Sandia National Laboratories, in "anything but secretarial work", and started her career in pulsed power physics there in 1974.[2]

Sweeney chaired the IEEE Plasma Science and Applications Committee from 1989 to 1990,[4] as its first female chair.[2] She also chaired the Committee on Women in Plasma Physics of the American Physical Society from 2010 to 2012.[5]

Contributions and recognition

In 1992, Sweeney was named a Fellow of the IEEE "for contributions to the understanding of plasma opening switches and beam interactions with matter in particle beam accelerators".[6] In 2007, Mount Holyoke College gave her their Alumnae Achievement Award.[3]

Sweeney won the 2013 National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Defense Programs Award of Excellence for her work as editor-in-chief of the NNSA Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan.[7] She is one of four coauthors of the book Impactful Times: Memories of 60 Years of Shock Wave Research at Sandia National Laboratories (2017).[8][9]

Selected publications

  • Lucy, L. B.; Sweeney, M. A. (August 1971), "Spectroscopic binaries with circular orbits", Astronomical Journal, 76: 544–556, Bibcode:1971AJ.....76..544L, doi:10.1086/111159
  • Sweeney, M. A. (June 1976), "Cooling times, luminosity functions and progenitor masses of degenerate dwarfs", Astronomy and Astrophysics, 49: 375–385, Bibcode:1976A&A....49..375S
  • Sweeney, M. A.; Farnsworth, A. V. (January 1981), "High-gain, low-intensity ICF targets for a charged-particle beam fusion driver", Nuclear Fusion, 21 (1): 41–54, Bibcode:1981NucFu..21...41S, doi:10.1088/0029-5515/21/1/004
  • Johnson, D. J.; Quintenz, J. P.; Sweeney, M. A. (February 1985), "Electron and ion kinetics and anode plasma formation in two applied Br field ion diodes", Journal of Applied Physics, 57 (3): 794–805, Bibcode:1985JAP....57..794J, doi:10.1063/1.334728
  • Matzen, M. Keith; Sweeney, M. A.; Adams, R. G.; Asay, J. R.; Bailey, J. E.; Bennett, G. R.; Bliss, D. E.; Bloomquist, D. D.; Brunner, T. A.; Campbell, R. B.; Chandler, G. A.; Coverdale, C. A.; Cuneo, M. E.; Davis, J.-P.; Deeney, C.; Desjarlais, M. P.; Donovan, G. L.; Garasi, C. J.; Haill, T. A.; Hall, C. A.; Hanson, D. L.; Hurst, M. J.; Jones, B.; Knudson, M. D.; Leeper, R. J.; Lemke, R. W.; Mazarakis, M. G.; McDaniel, D. H.; Mehlhorn, T. A.; Nash, T. J.; Olson, C. L.; Porter, J. L.; Rambo, P. K.; Rosenthal, S. E.; Rochau, G. A.; Ruggles, L. E.; Ruiz, C. L.; Sanford, T. W. L.; Seamen, J. F.; Sinars, D. B.; Slutz, S. A.; Smith, I. C.; Struve, K. W.; Stygar, W. A.; Vesey, R. A.; Weinbrecht, E. A.; Wenger, D. F.; Yu, E. P. (May 2005), "Pulsed-power-driven high energy density physics and inertial confinement fusion research", Physics of Plasmas, 12 (5): 055503, Bibcode:2005PhPl...12e5503M, doi:10.1063/1.1891746
  • Asay, James R.; Chhabildas, Lalit C.; Lawrence, R. Jeffery; Sweeney, Mary Ann (2017), Impactful Times: Memories of 60 Years of Shock Wave Research at Sandia National Laboratories, Shock Wave and High Pressure Phenomena, Springer International Publishing, doi:10.1007/978-3-319-33347-2, ISBN 978-3-319-33345-8

References

  1. ↑ Birth year from Library of Congress catalog entry, retrieved 2021-06-05
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Aboytes, Iris (16 December 2011), "Mary Ann Sweeney is one of Sandia's woman pioneers" (PDF), Sandia Lab News, p. 12
  3. 1 2 Award Recipients Past and Present, Mount Holyoke Alumnae Association, retrieved 2021-06-05
  4. ↑ History of NPSS Committee Membership (PDF), IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society, 7 April 2004, p. 63, retrieved 2021-06-04
  5. ↑ Committee on Women in Plasma Physics, American Physical Society, retrieved 2021-06-04
  6. ↑ IEEE Fellows directory, IEEE, retrieved 2021-06-04
  7. ↑ "NNSA Defense Programs Awards of Excellence" (PDF), Sandia Lab News, p. 8, 20 September 2013
  8. ↑ Impactful Times tells story of decades of Sandia shock physics research, Sandia National Laboratories, 17 October 2017, retrieved 2021-06-05
  9. ↑ Remarkable story of shock wave physics in post-World War II America, American Physical Society, 21 October 2019, retrieved 2021-06-05 – via ScienceDaily
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