The Research Career of Subramanian Raman at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Subramanian “Ram” Raman, a distinguished nuclear physicist and senior staff member of the Physics Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), died April 8, 2003. In June 1966, Raman joined the staff at ORNL working in the Nuclear Data Project. This position provided him insights into important open questions in nuclear structure physics, and the power of “horizontal” compilations of properties across a broad range of nuclei. These insights would guide Raman’s research interests throughout his 36-year career at ORNL. As shown by his great variety of publications, Raman’s research career was marked by an intense interest in all areas of nuclear physics. He published papers on topics ranging from detailed nuclear structure to giant resonances, to the search for superheavy nuclei, to the scattering of heavy ions. His research resulted in over 200 published papers and over 3000 citations of his work. It is however, his nuclear data evaluations, both horizontal and vertical, that we most often remember. His most often cited papers deal with the evaluation and systematics of nuclear data, and he helped establish many of the “rules” and guidelines for assignment of nuclear level properties. An overview of Raman’s work at ORNL is presented. © 2005 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]