Russell James Donnelly was a Canadian-American physicist known for his work on classical and quantum fluid dynamics.
Education
Donnelly graduated from McMaster University with a bachelor"s degree in 1951 and a Master"s degree in 1952. His Doctor of Philosophy work demonstrated that the oscillations of liquid helium in a U-tube at a low temperature could be described by two-phase liquid theory.
Career
In 1956 he received his doctorate from Yale University, with a thesis entitled "On the hydrodynamics of liquid helium". His doctoral advisers were the noted physicists C. T. Lane and Lars Onsager. In 1956 he became instructor and later professor at the James Franck Institute at the University of Chicago, where he worked with South. Chandrasekhar and Dave Fultz.
From 1959 - 1963 he was Sloan Fellow.
In 1966 he became a professor at the University of Oregon, where he later twice served as department chairman In 1972 he worked at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen.
He was also a visiting professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara and the University of Birmingham. He was a consultant at National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
He died from pneumonia on 13 June 2015 in Eugene, Oregon.