Robert Rosner

Rosner is the William E. Wrather distinguished service professor in the departments of Astronomy and Astrophysics and Physics at the University of Chicago. Rosner recently stepped down as director of Argonne National Laboratory, where he had also served as chief scientist. His research is mostly in the areas of plasma astrophysics and astrophysical fluid dynamics and magnetohydrodynamics (including especially solar and stellar magnetic fields); high-energy-density physics; boundary mixing instabilities; combustion modeling; applications of stochastic differential equations and optimization problems; and inverse methods.

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Articles by Robert Rosner

Analysis
14 January 2013
Climate ChangeNuclear EnergyNuclear Weapons

An open letter to President Obama: The time on the Doomsday Clock is five minutes to midnight

Robert SocolowThomas RosenbaumLynn EdenRod EwingAlexander GlaserSivan KarthaEdward "Rocky" Kolb Leon LedermanRamamurti RajaramanRobert RosnerJennifer SimsRichard C. J. SomervilleElizabeth J. Wilson

Editor's note: Founded in 1945 by University of Chicago scientists who had helped develop the first atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists subsequently created the Doomsday Clock in 1947 using the imagery of apocalypse (midnight) and the contemporary idiom of nuclear explosion (countdown to zero), to convey threats to humanity and the planet.

Opinion
24 August 2011
Nuclear Weapons

Moving to passive designs

Robert RosnerRebecca LordanStephen Goldberg

For months, and perhaps years, lessons will be learned from the events at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan, which will serve as both a laboratory and a classroom. As the sequence of events leading to the accident continued through the accident response, at least one concept was made clear: When operating reactors, defense-in-depth -- the technical concept of multiple layers of safety backup systems -- must incorporate a series of active backup systems (meaning that they require human intervention) that must be operable to forestall single-point catastrophic failures.

1 July 2011
The nuclear energy issue

Moving to passive designs

Robert RosnerRebecca LordanStephen Goldberg
1 March 2008
Feature

Making Nuclear Energy Work

Robert Rosner
How shifting research goals and improving collaboration with industry will help U.S. national labs spur new nuclear energy development.