Arthur L. Ruoff (1930-2025)
Arthur L. Ruoff (1930-2025)
Prof. Arthur Louis Ruoff passed away at age 94 in Ithaca, New York. It is an understatement to mention that with the passing of Arthur (Art) Ruoff, the high-pressure research community has lost a giant in the field of materials under extreme conditions of pressure. Professor Arthur Ruoff had a distinguished career at Cornell University where he rose through the professorial ranks and made seminal discoveries in phase transformations in materials under high pressures and pushed the boundaries of static high-pressure research. In his career, Art had a singular focus on reaching higher pressures first with a spherical diamond indenter and then later in his career with the diamond anvil cell devices.
I had the good fortune of collaborating with him during 1984-92 as a postdoctoral scholar and as a research assistant professor in the materials science and engineering department at Cornell University. Art was a bit of anomaly in the engineering department at Cornell as his colleagues were doing traditional materials science in metals, ceramics, and polymers, while his research was focused on basic physics and chemistry of materials under high pressures. Art realized in the early 1980’s that spherical indenter pressing against a flat substrate can reach ultra-high pressures. However, pressure calibration was a major challenge in the spherical indenter devices. Therefore, later in his research, he focused on diamond anvil cell studies and contributed to setting up dedicated high-pressure beamlines at the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS). This resulted in well calibrated high pressures of more than 400 GPa using x-ray pressure standards derived from shock compression data. After this achievement, the sign in Ruoff’s Lab quickly changed from “Think Megabars” to “Think Terapascals.” Art was very much interested in metallization under high pressure and his research group made seminal contribution to metallization of xenon, oxygen, alkali halide like cesium iodide, and devoted his research efforts in quest of metallic hydrogen. Art would frequently work on weekends and instilled a strong work ethics in the graduate students and postdoctoral scholars that were part of his research group. On a personal note, Art would take time off from his busy schedule to give driving lessons to my wife during early days at Cornell that she very much appreciates even today.
Art has left a legacy of setting up ambitious research goals, singular focus on technology development to achieve those goals, and a life’s work devoted to study on materials under extreme conditions. That legacy continues in the work of students and postdoctoral scholars that moved on to academic, industrial, and government labs after training in Ruoff’s lab.
Contributed by Yogesh K. Vohra, The University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA.
Photo contributed by Sergei M. Stishov, P.N. Lebedev Physical Institute RAS, Russia.