Sidney Fernbach

Sidney Fernbach (1917 to 1991) was an American physicist known for pioneering the use of computers in computational physics and nuclear weapons research. Beginning in 1952 he worked at the University of California Radiation Laboratory, where he used computers to support nuclear weapons research, and he served as originating editor of the book series Methods in Computational Physics and of The Journal of Computational Physics. He co-authored Computers and their Role in the Physical Sciences with A.H. Taub in 1970 and received the IEEE W. Wallace McDowell Award in 1987. The Sidney Fernbach Award, established in 1992, was named in his honor to recognize outstanding contributions in the application of high performance computing.