Elihu Boldt
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Elihu Aaron Boldt (15 July 1931–12 September 2008) was an American astrophysicist, who led an X-ray astronomy group at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center for more than 30 years.
July 15, 1931
Elihu Boldt | |
|---|---|
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| Born | Elihu Aaron Boldt July 15, 1931 |
| Died | September 12, 2008 (aged 77) |
| Alma mater | MIT |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | cosmic ray physics, X-ray astronomy |
| Institutions | Brookhaven Laboratory, Rutgers University, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center |
| Thesis | The lambda hyperon (1958) |
| Doctoral advisor | David O. Caldwell |
Biography
Elihu Boldt was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, on 15 July 1931. His father was a civil engineer who worked on construction of the New York subway and bridges; he died when Elihu was five.[1] His mother was a schoolteacher. Studying on a full scholarship at MIT, and got a BS in 1953, and a PhD in physics in 1958. His thesis was on Lambda-Hyperon, with David Caldwell as an adviser;[2] he also worked on cosmic rays with Bruno Rossi, whom he admired.[3] He worked on the Cosmotron particle accelerator in the Brookhaven Laboratory for his thesis,[3] and published several papers on Lambda decay modes and K meson interactions. There, he started to use cosmic rays as a source of accelerated particles.[2]
Boldt became an assistant professor at Rutgers University in 1958, and stayed there for six years. At that time he also spent two years as a postdoc at Ecole Polytechnique in France,[1] working on the Proton Synchrotron. Later, he worked as a postdoc with the Princeton cosmic rays group.[3] He met his future wife, Yvette Benharroch, in Israel;[2] they married in 1971 and had three children.[1] While in France, he became an enthusiast of the French cuisine; he later joined a culinary society in the US.[1][3]
In 1964 he started an X-ray astronomy group in the Laboratory for High Energy Physics (LHEA) at the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), invited by Frank B. McDonald. Boldt's move from cosmic ray research to X-ray astronomy was quite unorthodox: in 1960s, the X-ray astronomy was not a popular area of study, because only stars were known to be X-ray sources.[1]
The group focused on the X-ray sources in the Galactic Center, Cygnus, and the Crab Nebula, launching high altitude balloons and then sounding rockets from New Mexico and Australia.[4][2][5] They also participated in the development of multiple spacecraft missions, developing the multi-wire proportional counters for the Orbiting Solar Observatory (OSO-8, 1975), High Energy Astronomy Observatory (HEAO-1, 1977; Boldt was a co-PI of the A2 full-sky cosmic X-ray experiment[4][6]), and Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE, 1995).[2] The HEAO-1 detector had two fields of view to distinguish cosmic X-ray from noise.[1]
Boldt was the head of the X-ray astronomy group from 1964 to 1995, and was awarded with the Outstanding Scientific Achievement and the Lindsay Memorial Award by the GSFC. He died on 12 September 2008 from a heart attack.[2]
Selected publications
- Boldt, Elihu; Caldwell, David O.; Pal, Yash (1958). "θ10−θ20 Mass Difference". Physical Review Letters. 1 (4): 150–152. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.1.150.
- Boldt, Elihu; Bridge, Herbert S.; Caldwell, David O.; Pal, Yash (1958). "Helicity of the Proton from Λ0 Decay". Physical Review Letters. 1 (7): 256–258. Bibcode:1958PhRvL...1..256B. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.1.256.
- Balasubrahmanyan, V. K.; Boldt, E.; Palmeira, R. A. R. (1965). "Low-Energy Spectrum of Cosmic Rays as an Indicator of Primary Source Characteristics and Interstellar Propagation". Physical Review. 140 (4B): B1157–B1161. Bibcode:1965PhRv..140.1157B. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.140.B1157. hdl:2060/19660017742.
- Boldt, Elihu; McDonald, Frank B.; Riegler, Guenter; Serlemitsos, Peter (1966). "Extended Source of Energetic Cosmic X Rays". Physical Review Letters. 17 (8): 447–450. Bibcode:1966PhRvL..17..447B. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.17.447.
- Balasubrahmanyan, V. K.; Boldt, E.; Palmeira, R. A. R. (1967). "Solar modulation of galactic cosmic rays". Journal of Geophysical Research. 72: 27. Bibcode:1967JGR....72...27B. doi:10.1029/JZ072i001p00027. hdl:2060/19660020678.
- Boldt, Elihu A.; Desai, Upendra D.; Holt, Stephen S. (1969). "2-20keV Spectrum of X-Rays from the Crab Nebula and the Diffuse Background Near Galactic Anticenter". The Astrophysical Journal. 156: 427. Bibcode:1969ApJ...156..427B. doi:10.1086/149979.
- Boldt, E.; Serlemitsos, P. (1969). "Cosmic X-ray bremsstrahlung associated with suprathermal protons". Astrophysical Journal. 157: 557. Bibcode:1969ApJ...157..557B. doi:10.1086/150095.
- Boldt, Elihu A. (1981). "The High Energy Astronomy Observatory: HEAO-1". Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences. 71 (1): 24–44. Bibcode:1981uhur.symp...24B. JSTOR 24537251.
- Boldt, Elihu; Leiter, Darryl (1981). "Precursor active galaxies and the cosmic X-ray background". Nature. 290 (5806): 483–485. Bibcode:1981Natur.290..483B. doi:10.1038/290483a0. hdl:2060/19810011472.
- Boldt, Elihu; Leiter, Darryl (1987). "Constraints on possible precursor AGN sources of the cosmic X-ray background". The Astrophysical Journal. 322: L1. Bibcode:1987ApJ...322L...1B. doi:10.1086/185025.
- Boldt, Elihu (1987). "The cosmic x-ray background". Physics Reports. 146 (4): 215–257. Bibcode:1987PhR...146..215B. doi:10.1016/0370-1573(87)90108-6. hdl:2060/19800014758.
- Zdziarski, Andrzej A.; Zycki, Piotr T.; Svensson, Roland; Boldt, Elihu (1993). "On Compton reflection in the sources of the cosmic X-ray background". The Astrophysical Journal. 405: 125. Bibcode:1993ApJ...405..125Z. doi:10.1086/172345.
- Miyaji, Takamitsu; Lahav, Ofer; Jahoda, Keith; Boldt, Elihu (1994). "The cosmic X-ray background-IRAS galaxy correlation and the local X-ray volume emissivity". The Astrophysical Journal. 434: 424. arXiv:astro-ph/9405013. Bibcode:1994ApJ...434..424M. doi:10.1086/174744.
- Boldt, E.; Ghosh, P. (1999). "Cosmic rays from remnants of quasars?". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 307 (3): 491–494. arXiv:astro-ph/9902342. Bibcode:1999MNRAS.307..491B. doi:10.1046/j.1365-8711.1999.02600.x.
- Boldt, Elihu; Loewenstein, Michael (2000). "Cosmic ray generation by quasar remnants: Constraints and implications". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 316 (3): L29–L33. arXiv:astro-ph/0006221. Bibcode:2000MNRAS.316L..29B. doi:10.1046/j.1365-8711.2000.03768.x.