Laszlo Adler is an American physicist and a Taine McDougal Professor Emeritus in the Department of Integrated Systems Engineering at the Ohio State University. He is known for his work in Ultrasonics, Acousto-optics, and Nondestructive Evaluation of Materials. He is a holocaust survivor and has been active in scientific research for over 60 years.
Early life and education
Laszlo Adler was born in Debrecen, Hungary, on December 3, 1932, and became a Naturalized United States citizen in Flint, Michigan, in 1963. He received his BS in Physics and Mathematics from Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary, in 1956 and his MS in physics, under Egon A. Hiedeman, from Michigan State University in 1961. In 1969, he obtained a PhD in physics, under Mack A. Breazeale, from the University of Tennessee.
Career
From 1960 until 1964, Laszlo Adler was an assistant professor at General Motors Institute in Flint, Michigan. At the University of Göttingen, he was a National Science Foundation Faculty Fellow from 1964 until 1965. He became an instructor at the University of Tennessee in 1966, where he remained until 1980 and left as an associate professor to become a full professor at the Ohio State University in 1980. As a faculty member at the University of Tennessee, he was the Director of the Nondestructive Evaluation Division, the first such division in the United States, in Knoxville from 1978 until 1980. He became a visiting professor at the University of Paris VII in France in 1979 (a position he kept until 1997). He was an adjunct Research Participant in the Metals and Ceramics Division of Oak Ridge National Laboratory and a visiting scientist at the Air Force Materials Research Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio. While a professor at the Ohio State University, he served as the Director of the Nondestructive Evaluation Program from 1980 until 1995 and was a Taine McDougal Professor from 1989 until 1995. In 1975 he was a guest lecturer at the Israel Institute of Metals Technion. In 1982, 1985, 1988, and 1991, he served as a guest lecturer at the International School of Acoustics in Erice, Sicily. In 1987 he was a guest lecturer at the National Taiwan University. He guest-lectured at the University of Paris VII in 1980, 1984, 1988, and 1992. He serves as a technical committee member in Physical acoustics of the Acoustical Society of America and has been an editorial board member of Springer's Journal of Nondestructive Evaluation since 1979. He also contributed to several organizing committees of international congresses, and he was an organizer or co-organizer of congresses in the United States, Canada, Germany, Great Britain, and France. Laszlo Adler holds four patents and is President of Adler Consultants Inc.
Honors and awards
He received the University Distinguished Scholar Award from the Ohio State University in 1993 and the Taine McDougal Professorship in 1989. Exquisite Research grants were also awarded, such as the Ohio State University College of Engineering Lumley Research Award in 1992, the Ohio State University Distinguished Research Professor Award in 1984 and 1992, and the National Science Foundation Faculty Fellowship in 1964. In 2017, he was awarded the University of Tennessee Distinguished Alumni Award.