Dr. Joseph M. Kindel

Dr.  Joseph Kindel predicted in his PhD thesis the existence of electrostatic ion-cyclotron waves in the ionosphere, and they were subsequently observed.

Bachelor's from the University of Akron, 1965. Master's from UCLA, 1966. PhD from UCLA, 1970, studying under Charles F. Kennel. 

As UCLA faculty, Dr. Kindel led the X-1 Laser Fusion and Plasma Theory Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory, one of two organizations at the forefront of laser-plasma interaction simulation worldwide. He then served as Professor of Physics and Director of the Nevada Terawatt Facility at the University of Nevada, Reno.

At Techsource, Dr. Kindel led work in Nuclear Weapons Science. He later served as senior consultant to the Department of Energy, advising the National Nuclear Security Administration on the Defense Science and Inertial Confinement Fusion programs, funding research in high-energy-density plasma physics, materials science, and nuclear physics at national laboratories and universities nationwide. He retired in March 2020.

In 1983, the American Physical Society named him a Fellow for his contributions to ionospheric plasma physics, magnetic fusion, and laser fusion. He co-authored a Physical Review Letters paper on laser plasma accelerators later recognized as one of the sixty most seminal papers in Physical Review Letters in plasma physics over the last hundred years. Twenty of his papers have been cited more than 3,000 times combined.

He led efforts to bring weapons-program technology into the private sector, including an initiative supporting independent oil and gas producers, earning him the honorary title of Kentucky Colonel.

The nonlinear state of current driven electrostatic ion cyclotron waves in the ionosphere has been documented and studied in various ways, including in chapter 8 of Kindel's 1970 dissertation, Field Aligned Current Instabilities in the High Latitude Ionosphere (PhD dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles), and in Satyanarayana et al.'s 1985 paper, "Theory of the Current-Driven Ion Cyclotron Instability in the Bottomside Ionosphere," Journal of Geophysical Research, 90(A12), 12209–12218, along with numerous current measurements. 

Thesis 1971: Summary and Conclusions

Eg Non-linear electrostatic ion-cyclotron waves in the ionosphere 

PHD Thesis 1971 PDF Joseph Martin Kindel 

Thesis advisor Charles F. Kennel 

Publication: J. M. Kindel and C. F. Kennel, J. Geophys. Res.., 76, 3055 (1971).