Clarence Maxwell Fowler

Clarence Maxwell (Max) Fowler (November 26, 1918) grew up in Centralia, Illinois and earned his Chemical Engineering degree from the University of Illinois, graduating in 1940. He started his career at American Steel and Wire in Cleveland where he met and courted an attractive nurse, Janet Brown. They were married in the summer of 1942. Shortly after the wedding, Max joined the Navy V-12 program, and he and Janet headed for Annapolis, MD.

After being commissioned, he was assigned to the Academy faculty where, in spite of frequent notices that he would be sent "to sea," he was continually reassigned for 3 and 6--month intervals to the faculty. While there, he published his first journal paper reporting original work on transient heat flow. After the war, he earned a PhD degree in Physics from the University of Michigan. In 1949, he joined the Physics Faculty at Kansas State University. By the time Max left the faculty at Kansas State in 1956, he was a Professor of Physics. While at Kansas State and beginning in 1952, he spent summers at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, when his first explosive flux compression generators were fired. These first experiments were the direct precursor of the modern plate generators. A permanent magnet from a magnetron provided the initial magnetic field for the tests. Prof. Fowler subsequently left Kansas State and joined the Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1956 to gather a team to develop and apply explosive-driven magnetic flux compression devices. During the time that Max Fowler actively led the flux compression team, many of the possible geometries of magnetic flux compression generators were experimentally tested. However, with very few exceptions, these developmental tests were always in the context of powering an application. Over the years, he and his colleagues have used magnetic flux compression generator power supplies to energize a number of plasma producing devices, lasers, imploding foils, e-beam accelerators, and railguns. These power supplies have also been used to generate high magnetic fields to study properties of materials in megagauss fields including, more recently, high-temperature superconductors. His early work influenced subsequent megagauss solid-state research, liner implosion of plasma research, and the initiation of the "Megagauss" Conference series. Beginning with the first Megagauss Conference at Frascati, Italy in 1965, Max and his wife have attended all nine Megagauss Conferences to date and are planning to attend the tenth conference in Germany in 2004. Dr. Fowler's work played a critical role in establishing early working relations with Russian Colleagues at Arzamas-16, the Russian counterpart to Los Alamos, and at Novosibirsk.

Dr. Fowler is the author or coauthor of around two hundred open literature publications. One of his early reports, "An Introduction to Explosive Magnetic Flux Compression Generators", Los Alamos National Laboratory Report, LA-5890-MS (1975), has been used to introduce the subject of flux compression generators to scientists and engineers new to this field for nearly 30 years and has been updated for inclusion in this special edition of the Journal of Electromagnetic Phenomenon. He has directed a number of projects involving pulsed power and high magnetic fields. Max has also served on a number of panels and committees involving these areas. He is a long-time Fellow of the American Physical Society and is one of the early Los Alamos Laboratory Fellow appointees. He was recently awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Novosibirsk State University for his work in high-energy density physics and in furthering scientific relations between the USA and Russia. This and a painting of his wife, Janet, were the only things they were able to save when his house was destroyed by the forest fires of May, 2000. He was honored in a special session of the Megagauss VIII Conference held in Tallahassee, 1998, and together with Prof Fritz Herlach, in a special session of the RHMF '97 Conference (Research in High Magnetic Fields) in Sidney, Australia, 1997.

Although officially retired from LANL for several years, he has remained active both in publishing and in presenting lectures. In the last two years, lecture series have been given in South Korea, Russia and Germany. He still continues to visit many laboratories around the world conducting research in high magnetic fields and/or flux compression generators including Italy, Belgium, China, Japan, and most recently South Africa. He is presently an Adjunct Professor at Texas A&M University in the Nuclear Engineering Department. Regardless of his "official" status as a retiree, he is still most easily contacted at his Los Alamos National Laboratory office.

On a personal note, one of the things that we most remember about Max is the sessions we had in his smoke filled office. Up until a few years ago, he was a dedicated pipe smoker. He is still in the same office, but the aroma of his tobacco is no longer present. As he once said, "life seemed simpler in those days". What could be simpler than a group of scientists sitting around a smoke filled room, discussing physics?

Max has done a little skiing, a lot of fishing, and a whole lot of singing bass in a barbershop quartet. He continues his singing today and is a member of a group known as the Senior Boomers. He and his wife also still enjoy traveling.

Max is credited with being the father of the flux compression generator in the U.S. Although in response to this designation in an article on the "E Bomb" in the Spectrum, a publication of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, he insisted on sharing the credit with others, which also provides insight to Max's true character. His Russian colleagues refer to him as the "Sakharov of the West." Having known and worked with Max since the mid-1970s, we concur with this assessment. In addition, he is a first rate teacher, diplomat, and human being.