User:JHThomas/Sandbox

John Howard Thomas (born 9 April 1941) is Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Sciences and Professor of Astronomy at the University of Rochester. He is a recognized authority on astrophysical fluid dynamics and magnetohydrodynamics, especially relating to the Sun.

Thomas received his B.S, M.S, and Ph.D. degrees in engineering sciences from Purdue University in 1962, 1964, and 1966, respectively. After a year as a NATO postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge, UK, he joined the faculty of the University of Rochester in 1967. He served as University Dean of Graduate Studies at Rochester from 1983 to 1991. He has been a visiting professor at the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Sydney, and has also held visiting appointments at the Max-Planck Institute for Astrophysics, the National Solar Observatory, and the High Altitude Observatory. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and he was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1993-94. In 1995-1997, he was Chair of the Solar Physics Division of the American Astronomical Society.

Selected publications:

Thomas, J. H., and Cram, L. E. (eds.) 1981. The Physics of Sunspots (Sunspot, NM: Sacramento Peak Observatory).

Thomas, J. H., Cram, L. E. and Nye, A. H. 1982. Five-minute oscillations as a subsurface probe of sunspot structure. Nature, 297, 485.

Thomas, J. H. 1983. Magneto-atmospheric waves. Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics, 15, 321.

Thomas, J. H., and Weiss, N. O. (eds.) 1992. Sunspots: Theory and Observations (Dordrecht: Kluwer).

Thomas, J. H., Markiel, J. A., and Van Horn, H. M. 1995. Dynamo generation of magnetic fields in white dwarfs. Astrophys. J., 453, 403.

Montesinos, B., and Thomas, J. H. 1997. The Evershed effect in sunspots as a siphon flow along a magnetic flux tube. Nature, 390, 485.

Thomas, J. H., Weiss, N. O., Tobias, S. M., and Brummell, N. H. 2002. Downward pumping of magnetic flux as the cause of filamentary structures in sunspot penumbrae. Nature, 420, 390.

Thomas, J. H., and Weiss, N. O. 2008. Sunspots and Starspots (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).