Graduate Programs - USA
MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
Graduate study in Nuclear Chemistry at Michigan State University can lead to M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Chemistry or Chemical Physics. Courses in Nuclear and Radiochemistry (introductory, laboratory, and advanced) can be supplemented with Nuclear Physics courses offered by the Department of Physics.

Research is centered at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory, located next to the Chemistry Building. This laboratory, one of the newest national facilities, produces and uses beams of heavy ions to study phenomena at the forefront of nuclear science. Currently we are operating the first of two new superconducting cyclotrons, a K500 cyclotron, which can produce beams up to about 40 MeV per nucleon; within a few years this will be connected to a K800 cyclotron (under construction), and the combination will be capable of accelerating almost any nucleus (even U) up to several hundred MeV per nucleon. The Staff of the NSCL consists of approximately twenty faculty members from the Departments of Physics and Chemistry, some twenty-five graduate students, and about one hundred support staff. Notable resources that are available to students include state-of-the-art nuclear detector systems and electronics for both in-beam and off-line studies of charged particles and g-rays, plus powerful computation facilities, including a VAX 11/780 and five VAX 11/750 computers. Just as important, being a national facility means that many scientists from around the world travel to MSU to use the cyclotron. This stream of scientists, plus the joint research projects many faculty members maintain with other laboratories, provide unusually rich opportunities for exposure to the latest ideas in nuclear research through seminars and informal discussions.

The mechanisms of heavy-ion collisions at a few tens of MeV per nucleon are being studied by D. J. Morrissey (Ph.D., Univ. of Calif., Berkeley, 1975). These studies range from measurements of the conversion of orbital angular momentum into intrinsic spin in deep-inelastic reactions at low bombarding energies to testing for the occurrence of thermal equilibrium in higher-energy reactions by observation of Boltzmann populations of excited states. In addition, a novel high-solid-angle g-ray detector is being developed for in-beam measurements.

In-beam gamma-ray structure studies and exotic nuclei far from stability are interests of Wm. C. McHarris (Ph.D., Univ. of Calif., Berkeley, 1965). Currently these involve in-beam studies of deformed odd-odd nuclei, the use of a He jet for transport of short-lived nuclei away from the target site, and the development of new types of gamma-ray detectors (such as InSb). He is also performing (in conjunction with the Rasmussen/Crowe group at LBL) pion-nucleus experiments and is involved with such theoretical projects as calculating pion binding in nuclei and nuclear effects as indicated from elementary particle experiments.
Ph.D. students are customarily supported on research assistantships; M.S. students, on teaching assistantships.

Additional information can be obtained from:
Prof. David J. Morrissey
PHONE: (517) 355-9554
- or -
Prof. Wm. C. McHarris
PHONE: (517) 353-5961
Department of Chemistry
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824
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