Charlotte Froese Fischer

{{short description|Canadian-American applied mathematician and computer scientist}}

{{Infobox scientist

| name = Charlotte Froese Fischer

|image=EDSAC (16).jpg

|caption=Fischer at EDSAC

| birth_name=Charlotte Froese

| birth_date = {{birth date|1929|9|21}}

| birth_place = Stara Mykolaivka, Donetsk, Ukraine

| death_date = {{death date and age|2024|2|8|1929|9|21}}

| death_place = Maryland, U.S.

| alma_mater = University of British Columbia
University of Cambridge

| doctoral_advisor = Douglas Hartree

| workplaces = University of British Columbia
Harvard College Observatory
Vanderbilt University
National Institute of Standards and Technology

| awards = Sloan Research Fellowship
Fellow of the American Physical Society
Member, Royal Physiographic Society in Lund
Fulbright Senior Research Award
Foreign Member, Lithuanian Academy of Sciences
Honorary Doctorate, Malmö University
Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada
Honorary Doctorate, University of Western Ontario

| spouse={{marriage|Patrick C. Fischer|1967|2011|end=d.}}

}}

Charlotte Froese Fischer (September 21, 1929 – February 8, 2024) was a Canadian-American applied mathematician, computer scientist and physicist noted for the development and implementation of the Multi-Configurational Hartree–Fock (MCHF) approach to atomic-structure calculations and its application to the description of atomic structure and spectra.{{cite web|title=Scientist Charlotte Froese Fischer was considered the 'first lady of computational atomic structure theory'|url=https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-scientist-charlotte-froese-fischer-was-considered-canadas-first-lady/|last=Falk|first=Dan|publisher=The Globe and Mail|date=March 28, 2024|access-date=April 16, 2024}}

The experimental discovery of the negative ion of calcium{{citation

| journal = Physical Review Letters

| last1=Pegg |first1= D. J.

| last2= Thompson | first2= J. S.

| last3=Compton | first3= R. N.

| last4=Alton | first4= G. D.

| title=Evidence for a stable negative ion of calcium

| volume = 59

| issue=20 | pages = 2267–2270

| year= 1987 |doi = 10.1103/PhysRevLett.59.2267 | pmid=10035499 | bibcode=1987PhRvL..59.2267P }}

was motivated by her theoretical prediction of its existence.{{citation

| journal = Physical Review Letters

| last1=Froese Fischer |first1=Charlotte

| last2= Lagowski | first2= Jolanta B.

| last3=Vosko | first3= S.H.

| title=Ground States of Ca⁻ and Sc⁻ from Two Theoretical Points of View

| volume = 59

| issue=20 | pages = 2263–2266

| year= 1987 |bibcode = 1987PhRvL..59.2263F |doi = 10.1103/PhysRevLett.59.2263 | pmid=10035498 }}

This was the first known anion of a Group 2 element.{{citation

| journal = Reviews of Modern Physics

| last1=Buckman |first1=Stephen J.

| last2= Clark | first2= Charles W.

| title=Atomic negative-ion resonances

| volume = 66

| issue=2 | pages = 539–655

| year= 1994 |doi = 10.1103/RevModPhys.66.539 | bibcode=1994RvMP...66..539B }}{{citation

| journal = Journal of Physical and Chemical Reference Data

| last1=Andersen |first1=T.

| last2= Haugen | first2= H. K.

| last3= Hotop | first3= H.

| title=Binding Energies in Atomic Negative Ions: III

| volume = 28

| issue=6 | pages = 1511–1533

| year= 1999 |doi = 10.1063/1.556047| bibcode=1999JPCRD..28.1511A }}

Its discovery was cited in Froese Fischer's election to Fellow of the American Physical Society.

Early life

Charlotte Froese was born on September 21, 1929, in the village of Stara Mykolaivka (formerly Pravdivka, and Nikolayevka{{cite book

| last1=Huebert | first1= Helmut T.

| last2= Schroeder | first2 = William

| title = Mennonite Historical Atlas

| year=1996

| publisher= Springfield Publishers

| isbn =978-0920643044}}), in the Donetsk region, in the present-day Ukraine, to parents of Mennonite descent. Her parents immigrated to Germany in 1929 on the last train allowed to cross the border before its closure by Soviet authorities. After a few months in a refugee camp, her family was allowed to immigrate to Canada, where they eventually established themselves in Chilliwack, British Columbia.

Education and research

She obtained both a B.A. degree, with honors, in Mathematics and Chemistry and an M.A. degree in Applied Mathematics from the University of British Columbia in 1952 and 1954, respectively. She then obtained her Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics and Computing at Cambridge University in 1957, pursuing coursework in quantum theory with Paul Dirac. She worked under the supervision of Douglas Hartree, whom she assisted in programming the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC) for atomic-structure calculations.

She served on the mathematics faculty of the University of British Columbia from 1957 till 1968, where she introduced numerical analysis and computer courses into the curriculum and was instrumental in the formation of the Computer Science Department. Froese Fischer spent 1963-64 at the Harvard College Observatory, where she extended her research on atomic-structure calculations. While at Harvard, she was the first woman scientist to be awarded an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship. In 1991 she became a Fellow of the American Physical Society, in part for her contribution to the discovery of negative calcium. In 1995 she was elected a member of the Royal Physiographic Society in Lund, in 2004 a foreign member of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, and in 2015 she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Technology from Malmö University, Sweden.

Contributions

Froese Fischer was the author of over 300 research articles on computational atomic theory, many of which have had far-reaching impact in the area of atomic-structure calculations. The early version of her MCHF program, published in the first volume of Computer Physics Communications received two [http://www.citationclassics.org/ Citation Classics Awards] in 1987. She authored an influential monograph on Hartree-Fock approaches to the first-principles calculation of atomic structure,{{cite book |last= Froese-Fischer |first= Charlotte |date= 1977 |title= The Hartree-Fock method for atoms : a numerical approach |location= New York |publisher= Wiley Interscience |isbn= 047125990X}}

and coauthored a substantial successor work.{{cite book |last1= Froese-Fischer |first1= Charlotte |last2= Brage |first2= Tomas |last3= Jönsson |first3= Per |date= 1997 |title= Computational atomic structure: an MCHF approach |location= Bristol and Philadelphia |publisher= Institute of Physics Publishing |isbn= 0750303743}}

One of her largest efforts in the field is the calculation of the complete lower spectra of the beryllium-like to argon-like isoelectronic sequences, amounting to the publication of data covering 400 journal pages and a total of over 150 ions.{{Cite journal

| last1 = Froese Fischer | first1 = C.

| last2 = Tachiev | first2 = G.

| journal = Atomic Data and Nuclear Data Tables

| volume = 87 | issue = 1

| pages = 1–184

| title = Breit-Pauli energy levels, lifetimes, and transition probabilities for the beryllium-like to neon-like sequences

| year = 2004

| doi = 10.1016/j.adt.2004.02.001

| bibcode = 2004ADNDT..87....1F }}.{{citation

| last1 = Froese Fischer | first1 = C.

| last2 = Tachiev | first2 = G.

| last3 = Irimia | first3 = A.

| journal = Atomic Data and Nuclear Data Tables

| volume = 92| issue = 5

| pages = 607–812

| title = Relativistic energy levels, lifetimes, and transition probabilities of the sodium-like to argon-like sequences

| year = 2006

| doi = 10.1016/j.adt.2006.03.001

|bibcode = 2006ADNDT..92..607F }}. She also authored a scientific biography of her Ph.D. thesis advisor, Douglas Hartree.{{cite book |last= Froese-Fischer |first= Charlotte |date= 2003 |title= Douglas Rayner Hartree: His Life In Science And Computing |location= Singapore |publisher= World Scientific |isbn= 9814485209}}

Froese Fischer was a research professor of computer science at Vanderbilt University and a Guest Scientist in the Atomic Spectroscopy Group at NIST. From 1967 to 2011, she was married to Patrick C. Fischer, himself a noted computer scientist and professor at Vanderbilt,{{citation|journal=Los Angeles Times|date=September 3, 2011|title=Patrick Fischer, 1935–2011: Professor was targeted by the Unabomber}} and the mother of Carolyn Fischer, an environmental economist. An autobiographical account of her own life up to the year 2000 was published in Molecular Physics,{{citation

| last = Froese Fischer | first = Charlotte

| journal = Molecular Physics

| volume = 98| issue = 16

| pages = 1043–1050

| title = Reminiscences at the End of the Century

| year = 2000

| doi = 10.1080/00268970050080393

| bibcode = 2000MolPh..98.1043F

| s2cid = 121650151

}}

and a biographical review of her scientific work up to 2019 has been published in Atoms.{{citation

| last = Hibbert | first = Alan

| journal = Atoms

| volume = 7 | issue = 4

| pages = 107

| title = Charlotte Froese Fischer—Her Work and Her Impact

| year = 2019

| doi = 10.3390/atoms7040107

| bibcode = 2019Atoms...7..107H

| doi-access = free}} She died on February 8, 2024 at her home in Maryland.

References

External links

[https://web.archive.org/web/20100423200057/http://www.vuse.vanderbilt.edu/~cff/cff.html Personal web page, includes all her scientific work: results, publications, software, etc...]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20100702090751/http://www.vuse.vanderbilt.edu/~cff/Reminiscence_CFF.pdf Reminiscences at the end of the century: Biography of herself and a short biography of Douglas Hartree]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20061006114244/http://physics.nist.gov/Divisions/Div842/Gp1/Staff/fischer.html Page of Charlotte Froese Fischer on the NIST website]
{{MathGenealogy|id=24919}}

Category:1929 births

Category:2024 deaths

Category:Canadian women mathematicians

Category:Fellows of the American Physical Society

Category:Members of the Royal Physiographic Society in Lund

Category:Canadian women computer scientists

Category:Canadian computer scientists

Category:Canadian women physicists

Category:Canadian women chemists

Category:Canadian Mennonites

Category:20th-century American women scientists

Category:Theoretical chemists