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Physicist Earns Research Award
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MAY 28, 2004 -- Professor Alex Kostinski doesn't like to stay in one place for too long, scientifically speaking.
A theoretical physicist, his research has encompassed optics, astronomy, fluid mechanics, atmospheric science, radar meteorology and polarized waves. "I once did some work in medicine, though I don't understand the title of the paper," he says. "I was second author; the first author was a physician."
This breadth of work amounts to a good deal more than dabbling, which is why Kostinski has been selected to receive Michigan Tech's 2004 Research Award.
Warren Wiscombe, a senior scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Climate and Radiation Branch, calls him "a scientist for all seasons."
"His passion for science always burst forth from him like lightening bolts from a van de Graaf generator," Wiscombe said, recalling Kostinski's visits to his office. "He is a true intellectual of science, ranging broadly over so many areas and loving to learn new things far afield from his work."
Feodor Vainstein, a professor of computer engineering at Georgia Tech, calls him "one of the most brilliant and revolutionary contemporary physicists." Kostinski collaborator Arthur Jameson, a senior scientist with RJH Scientific, Inc., of Arlington, Va., says he's "the best scientist I have ever worked with."
It's hard to avoid hyperbole when describing Kostinski and his work, says his colleague Associate Professor Raymond Shaw (Physics). "I don't want to use too many superlatives, but I can honestly say Alex is one of those people who is truly brilliant."
"Plus, he's very considerate, very kind and very easy to work with."
Kostinski's insights seem to flow in large part from fresh looks at old assumptions. In nominating him, physics department chair Ravi Pandey and his fellow faculty cited his "impressive ability to strike at the fundamental physical assumptions that underlie major disciplinary areas of atmospheric science and remote sensing--to question long-held 'truths,' find them weak or even invalid, and to devise entirely new and innovative approaches to solving some of the most complex problems in science."
Kostinski doesn't limit his inquiry to fields in which he is heavily credentialed--not a bad thing, according to his colleagues.
"I always thought that one of Alex's great strengths in pursuing meteorological problems was that he was not greatly burdened by an excess of meteorological knowledge," says Ronald Taylor, the former program director of physical meteorology for the National Science Foundation.
In particular, Kostinski's work in meteorology has generated a thunderstorm of controversy, challenging as it does established beliefs about the fundamental nature of clouds. Conventional wisdom stated that water particles in clouds were fairly evenly distributed.
Kostinski's research "demonstrated that clouds are more like a plum pudding," Taylor said. Far from being uniform, clouds are textured, with the droplets clumping and clustering like raisins and candied fruit. "We aren't sure yet, but it appears that the drops like to stick together," Kostinski said.
This is not mere intellectual doodling. If Kostinski is right, radar images made famous by the Weather Channel have been based on decades-old assumptions that are not true.
"It just might be that every measurement we make is wrong in terms of how much water is actually there," Graduate Dean Bruce Rafert explains. "You look at TV, and you see light green, dark green and red. But how much water is really there? It depends on particle distribution."
"The way people have been doing things for 50 years may be flawed," Shaw said. "This is a fundamentally different way of thinking about the atmosphere."
Kostinski's ideas "mightily roused the rainfall community here at Goddard," Wiscombe said. "His courage in confronting the lion in its own den impressed me greatly. As I learn more of the history of science, I am increasingly convinced that good ideas are not rare and indeed are always floating around, but only those which are championed with perseverance and courage (and, hopefully, are correct) survive. Alex has the knack of hitting upon good ideas and the courage and perseverance to see them through.
"A rare and noble combination."
The size and distribution of atmospheric raindrops also has implications for how much sunlight gets through the clouds to hit the earth's surface. "I thought of this at first when I was walking in the woods," Kostinski said. "If you think of visibility in the woods, the length of the line of sight depends not only on the width of the trunks and number of trees, but also on how they cluster. The more they cluster, the higher the probability of seeing farther (and closer) than average. Similarly, photons, particles of light, can get through clouds in a different manner, depending on the clustering of droplets."
Another example of Kostinski's ability to wrap his mind around unfamiliar territory occurred recently, when he inherited a graduate student after the student's faculty advisor left the university. "Alex essentially spent the summer learning adaptive optics," Shaw says. Within a year, not only had the student completed his PhD, but their research had generated two groundbreaking papers in the area of imaging extrasolar planets.
"Getting a student to complete a thesis in a year and publish a couple of papers is hard enough," said former MTU professor Christ Ftaclas of the University of Hawaii, the student's first advisor. "But to start from scratch and also initiate new research in that year is absolutely outstanding."
As difficult as it may be, this is how Kostinski enjoys doing business. "I like to change fields," he says. "I'm afraid if I stay too long in one area, I'll get stale."
That doesn't seem likely. Kostinski has kept busy, receiving about $1 million over the last 15 years for what he calls "'cheap' theoretical research" in numerous fields, as well as 15 years of continuous support from the National Science Foundation. He has published more than 50 articles in refereed journals and teaches courses ranging from thermodynamics to remote sensing.
"He is," says Rafert, "the prototypical scientist."
Kostinski will receive a $2,500 award and be recognized at President's Convocation this fall.
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