Dr. Stephen Pollaine

One of Dr. Stephen Pollaine’s earliest memories includes realizing his love for math and science. As a child, he was able to recognize the beauty within these subjects and found them to be very harmonious. It is these realizations that drove him to become a physicist. Following this passion, he first earned a Bachelor of Science at Yale University in 1973, and later received a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1980. That same year, he began his illustrious career with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Dr. Pollaine remained dedicated to the field of physics at the laboratory throughout his entire career. He retired from the lab in 2011, having largely focused his research on laser fusion and material strength at high pressures. In his career, he maintained professional affiliation with the American Physical Society.

Dr. Pollaine feels his biggest achievement has been demonstrating a calculation that shows the giant laser at the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory was feasible. This took place in the 90s, when researchers first began to propose and design the National Ignition Facility and there was a lot of controversy about whether it would ever work. Dr. Pollaine had a hand in some of the initial calculations that indicated it could work. The National Ignition Facility is a large laser-based inertial confinement fusion research device, located at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California. NIF uses lasers to heat and compress a small amount of hydrogen fuel with the goal of inducing nuclear fusion reactions.  He also pioneered various calculations on the symmetry of the laser irradiation and fuel implosion.