Robert Ellis

Robert Anderson Ellis Jr. (1927 – 15 December 1989) was an American physicist and head of experimental projects at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.

Early life and education Robert Ellis was born in Kansas City, Missouri.

Ellis received a bachelor's degree from Fisk University in 1948, and a master's degree from Yale University in 1949. After completing his master's education, Ellis began work as an instructor at the Tennessee Agricultural & Industrial State College, in Nashville, Tennessee (now Tennessee State University).

Career A model Deacon rocket with payload, representative of those used to test the ionosphere. Ellis is second from the right. After completing his PhD, Ellis returned to his instructor position at Tennessee Agricultural & Industrial State College, where he was later promoted to full professor.

In 1956, Ellis joined Project Matterhorn, a Princeton-based working group focused on controlled fusion studies. In his work within Project Matterhorn, Ellis focused on magnetic confinement and heating of plasmas in stellarators. The group's studies on B-1 and B-3 devices were the first to document ohmic heating; anomalous transport across the magnetic field; radio frequency plasma heating at the lower-hybrid frequency; and nonlinear cyclotron harmonic interactions.

In 1969, Ellis spent six months at the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Novosibirsk, USSR, with a focus on fostering international collaboration in the sciences. Ellis also served as foreign secretary of the Advisory Committee on the USSR and Eastern Europe for the National Academy of Sciences. This device was used in fusion experiments for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission at PPPL from 1972 to 1977. It was the first tokamak without a copper liner.

During his career, Ellis was a member of the Department of Energy's Compact Toroid Coordination Committee, in which he and Japanese plasma physicist Masaaki Yamada led the Spheromak project.

Robert Ellis's son, Bob Ellis, is also a physicist. Bob Ellis studied at Princeton University and the New Jersey Institute of Technology, and is currently chief engineer at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.

Ellis died December 15, 1989, in Princeton, New Jersey, from kidney failure.

Legacy Princeton University sponsors a fellowship honoring Robert A. Ellis that is awarded at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.