Alfvén, Hannes Olof Gösta, 1908–95, Swedish physicist, Ph.D. Univ. of Uppsala, 1934. He was a lecturer at Uppsala from 1934 to 1937 and a researcher at the Nobel Institute of Physics from 1937 to 1940. In 1940 he joined the faculty at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, remaining there until his retirement in 1991. From 1967 to 1991 he also was a professor at the Univ. of California, San Diego. Alfvén shared the 1970 Nobel Prize in Physics with Louis Néel for his research on magnetohydrodynamics, a field that studies the dynamics of electrically conducting fluids such as plasmas, liquid metals, and salt water. His work has had important applications in the field of plasma physics.
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