Michael Danos

• Date and place of birth data: 10 January 1922, Riga, Latvia
• Citizenship:
• USA, Naturalized 1957
• Education:
• 1948 - 1950 University Heidelberg, Germany, Ph.D.(Dr.rer.nat) Physics (with Prof. J.H.D.Jensen)
• 1946 - 1948 University Hannover, Germany, M.S.(Dipl.Ing.) Electrical Engineering (with Prof. Sennheiser)
• 1944 - 1945 University Dresden, Germany Electrical Engineering (with Prof. Barkhausen)
• 1941 - 1944 University Riga, Latvia Electrical Engineering
• Current Professional Interests:
• Theoretical Physics, Field Theory, Nuclear Structure, Medical Instrumentation Employment
• History: 1994 - Physicist, Rayex Co, Gaithersburg, MD
• 1954 - 1994 Physicist, National Institute of Standards and Technology (formerly National Bureau of Standards)
• 1952 - 1954 Research Associate, Columbia University, New York (Prof. C.H.Townes)
• 1951 - 1952 Assistant, University Heidelberg, Germany (Prof. O.Haxel)
• 1948 - 1951 Assistant, University Hannover and Heidelberg, Germany (Prof. J.H.D.Jensen}
• 1944 - 1945 Junior Assistant, University Dresden, Germany (Prof. H.Barkhausen)
• Awards:
• 1959 Guggenheim Fellowship
• 1966 Department of Commesce Silver Medal
• 1970 Sir Thomas Lyle Fellowship
• 1972 Alexander von Humboldt Senior U.S.Scientist Award
• 1983 National Bureau of Standards Fellow
• 1984 Department of Commerce Gold Medal
• 1993 Alexander von Humboldt Senior Fellow, Renewal
• Visiting Professor and Scientist:
• University of Maryland,
• College Park Duke University
• Purdue University University of Arizona,
• Tucson CEN Saclay, France
• Copenhagen University, Denmark
• CERN, Switzerland
• Heidelberg University, Germany
• Freiburg University, Germany
• Frankfurt University, Germany
• Erlangen University, Germany
• Bonn University, Germany
• University of Melbourne, Australia
• University of Cape Town, South Africa
• JINR, Dubna, Russia Kurchatov AEI, Moscow, Russia INI,
• Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
• Budker Institute, Novosibirsk, Russia
• Enrico Fermi Institute, U. Chicago
• Hahn-Meitner Institute, Berlin
•  
• Scientific Publications: Over 160 scientific research papers and review articles published in diverse scientific journals and as chapters in books
• Books: Relativistic Many-Body Bound Systems, with V. Gillet NBS Monograph 147, 1975
• Relativistic Many-Body Bound Systems: Electromagnetic Properties with V. Gillet; Supplement, NBS Monograph 147, 1975
• Methods in Relativistic Nuclear Physics, with V. Gillet and M. Cauvin; Elsiver-North Holland Publ., 1984
• Pocketbook of Mathematical Functions, with J. Rafelski Harri Deutsch Publ., 1984
• Angular Momentum Calculus in Quantum Physics, with V. Gillet World Scientific, 1990
• Patents:
• Several patents in electronics and medical instrumentation
•  
• PUBLICATIONS more than 160 

***

Michael Danos, a theoretical physicist who invented and patented medical imaging devices, died Aug. 30, 1999 at Georgetown University Hospital after a stroke. He lived in Washington DC.

For 40 years before his federal retirement in 1994, Dr. Danos was a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and its predecessor agency, the National Bureau of Standards.

He held patents in electronics and medical instrumentation, and he was author of five books and more than 160 scientific papers.

Since 1990, he had been a visiting scholar at the University of Chicago.

Dr. Danos was born in Riga, Latvia.

His homeland was occupied initially by the Soviet Union and then by Germany during World War II.

He avoided conscription by the Latvian, Soviet and German armies and he studied electrical engineering in Riga and later Dresden, Germany, during the war.

After the war, while living in a displacement camp in Hannover, Germany, he received a master's degree in electrical engineering at the University of Hannover. He received a doctorate in physics at the University of Heidelberg.

He then came to the United States, and from 1952 to 1954, he was a postdoctoral research associate at Columbia University.

In 1954 he moved to Washington and joined the staff of what then was the National Bureau of Standards.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Dr. Danos's work included relativistic heavy ions. This work became an important element in the development of the billion-dollar heavy-ion collider being commissioned at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, N.Y.

In the early 1990s, while on the staff at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Dr. Danos founded Rayex Co. in Gaithersburg, where he developed high-power X-ray tubes for medical imaging and industrial radiology.

His marriages to Helga Danos and Victoria Danos ended in divorce.

Survivors include his wife, Sheila Fitzpatrick of Washington and Chicago; two daughters from his first marriage, of Ellicott City, Maryland, and of Costa Mesa, Calif.; a son of his second marriage, residing in Washington and Chicago; two brothers; and two grandchildren.