"Martin Kruskal

Mr. Kruskal, one of the world's pre-eminent applied mathematicians and mathematical physicists, died Dec. 26 at Princeton Medical Center after suffering a stroke in mid-December. He was 81. He had suffered an earlier stroke in August, but had fought his way back to health and was working as an active scholar when he was felled again last month. Officials at Princeton University announced his death yesterday. Mr. Kruskal spent 38 years on the Princeton faculty before moving to Rutgers University in 1989.
Mr. Kruskal is best known for his work in the 1960s in which he pioneered the understanding of the soliton, a powerful energy wave. His mathematical analysis of solitons, conducted with colleague Norman Zabusky, proved that such waves were possible and brought them within the realm of practical use, including their use as boosters of the signals conveyed along long-distance, undersea, fiber optic communication cables.In the 1950s, Kruskal made a number of seminal contributions including Kruskal-Shafranov Instability, Bernstein-Greene-Kruskal ( BGK ) Modes and the MHD Energy Principle, which laid the theoretical foundations of controlled nuclear fusion and the then undeveloped field of plasma physics. In 1960, he developed the well-known Kruskal Coordinates ( also called Kruskal-Szekeres Coordinates ), used in the theory of relativity to explain black holes.
He is most famous for his role in starting the "soliton revolution," considered one of the great mathematical advances of the last half of the 20th century. He and Norman Zabusky discovered nonlinear waves that behave in many ways like linear waves, which they termed "solitons." Solitons are now known to be ubiquitous in nature, from physics to chemistry to biology. Their unique properties make them useful for communications, such as in undersea fiber optic cables, and they have been considered as a basis for computing.