astronomy

Harold V. McIntosh

Harold V. McIntosh is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Harold V. McIntosh rather than just read about it. In short: Harold Varner McIntosh (1929–2015) was an American computational physicist who worked for many years in Mexico. Beyond physics, his research interests included quantum chemistry, programming language design, cellular automata, and flexagons.

Key takeaways

Harold V. McIntosh belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Harold V. McIntosh to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Harold V. McIntosh from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Harold Varner McIntosh (1929–2015) was an American computational physicist who worked for many years in Mexico. Beyond physics, his research interests included quantum chemistry, programming language design, cellular automata, and flexagons.

Early life and education McIntosh was born on March 11, 1929, in Colorado, and was an undergraduate at the Colorado State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts (now Colorado State University), where he graduated in 1949 with a degree in physics. He went on to graduate study at Cornell University, earning a master's degree in 1952. He began doctoral study at Brandeis University, but stopped before completing the program. Much later in his career, he completed a doctorate in quantum chemistry at Uppsala University in Sweden in 1972.

Career and later life After leaving Brandeis, McIntosh worked at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, and then in the Research Institute for Advanced Studies in Baltimore. In 1962 he moved to the University of Florida to work on quantum theory in the department of physics and astronomy there. In 1964, McIntosh moved to Mexico, where he would work for the rest of his career. He started in the center for research and advanced studies of the Instituto Politécnico Nacional, which eventually became CINVESTAV; he worked there on the design of the CONVERT programming language. After another year as director of programming at the computer center of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (again working on programming language design) he returned in 1966 to the Instituto Politécnico Nacional as a professor in the School of Physics and Mathematics and coordinator for applied mathematics. Here, as well as the development of programming languages and software for scientific visualization, his interests returned to physics, including issues of degeneracy in the solution of physical equations, and quantum two-body problems involving a magnetic monopole (the so-called MICZ Kepler system, in which the M stands for McIntosh). After nine years at the Instituto Politécnico Nacional, McIntosh moved in 1975 to the Institute of Sciences of the Meritorious Autonomous University of Puebla, where he became the founding director of the Department of Microcomputer Applications. There, his interests shifted to cellular automata for the final decades of his career. He died in Puebla, Mexico on November 30, 2015.

Recognition McIntosh was a member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences. In 2008, a special issue of the Journal of Cellular Automata was published in his honor.

Selected publications McIntosh, Harold V. (December 1959), "On accidental degeneracy in classical and quantum mechanics", American Journal of Physics, 27 (9): 620–625, Bibcode:1959AmJPh..27..620M, doi:10.1119/1.1934944 Guzmán, Adolfo; McIntosh, Harold V. (August 1966), "CONVERT", Communications of the ACM, 9 (8), Association for Computing Machinery: 604–615, doi:10.1145/365758.365787 McIntosh, Harold V.; Cisneros, Arturo (1970), "Degeneracy in the presence of a magnetic monopole", Journal of Mathematical Physics, 11 (3): 896–916, Bibcode:1970JMP....11..896M, doi:10.1063/1.1665227, MR 0272287 McIntosh, Harold V. (1971), "Symmetry and degeneracy", in Loebl, Ernest M. (ed.), Group theory and its applications, Vol. II, New York: Academic Press, pp. 75–144, MR 0471767 Hehenberger, Michael; McIntosh, Harold V.; Brändas, Erkki (November 1974), "Weyl's theory applied to the Stark effect in the hydrogen atom", Physical Review A, 10 (5): 1494–1506, Bibcode:1974PhRvA..10.1494H, doi:10.1103/physreva.10.1494 McIntosh, Harold V. (1990), Gutowitz, Howard (ed.), "Wolfram's class IV automata and a good Life", Cellular automata: theory and experiment, proceedings of the workshop held in Los Alamos, New Mexico, September 9–12, 1989, Physica D, 45 (1–3): 105–121, Bibcode:1990PhyD...45..105M, doi:10.1016/0167-2789(90)90177-Q, MR 1094872 Martínez, Genaro Juárez; Adamatzky, Andrew; McIntosh, Harold V. (April 2006), "Phenomenology of glider collisions in cellular automaton Rule 54 and associated logical gates" (PDF), Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, 28 (1): 100–111, Bibcode:2006CSF....28..100M, doi:10.1016/j.chaos.2005.05.013, archived from the original (PDF) on 2019-04-28, retrieved 2023-01-21 McIntosh, Harold V. (2009), One Dimensional Cellular Automata, Luniver Press

References

External links Home page

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Harold V. McIntosh

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Harold V. McIntosh claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Harold V. McIntosh before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Harold V. McIntosh ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Harold V. McIntosh

In research: Harold V. McIntosh appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Harold V. McIntosh in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Harold V. McIntosh is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1929 births, 2015 deaths, Academic staff of the Instituto Politécnico Nacional, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Harold V. McIntosh outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Harold V. McIntosh in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Harold V. McIntosh means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Harold V. McIntosh out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Harold V. McIntosh in simple terms?

Why does Harold V. McIntosh matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Harold V. McIntosh?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Harold V. McIntosh.