Biography of Joseph Ford

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Biography of Joseph Ford
Dates of Birth and Death:
(∗) 18 December 1927 in Buncombe County, North Carolina, USA
(†) 26 April 1995 in Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Family Data:
Joseph Ford was married twice and leaving his second wife a widow. He has
also several children.
Education:
In 1952 Ford obtained his B.S. in Physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
In 1956 he was awarded with his Ph.D. in Physics at the Johns Hopkins
University.
Professional Career:
Ford worked for two years as researcher at the Union Carbide (Niagara Fall,
NY) on physics. In 1958 he went to the University of Miami. In 1961 Ford
became Associate Professor at the Georgia Institute for Technology. In 1978
he got the regent’s professorship for physics, which he held till his death in
1995.
In 1980 Ford founded the journal Physica D, the first journal to deal with
non-linear dynamics. His field of research was the Chaos theory, i.e. he
refuted determinism as taught by Laplace: “Chaos eliminates the Laplacian
fantasy of deterministic predictibility.”
Von Ford made the saying: “God plays dice with the Universe. But they’re
loaded dice. And the main objective of physics now is to find out what rules
were they and how we can use them for our own ends.”
Publications:
• The Fermi-Pasta-Ulam problem paradox turns discovery (Amsterdam
1992).
• Festschrift: Progress in chaotic dynamics: essays in honor of Joseph
Ford’s 60th birthday (Amsterdam, North-Holland 1988; 1992).
Ford left many unpublished manuscripts.

Copyright c○ by Stochastikon GmbH (http://encyclopedia.stochastikon.com) 2
Bibliography:
• http://www.library.gatech.edu/archives/finding-aids/display/xsl/MS108 (18
July 2007).
• http://www.polyoinos.de/philstuff/evolution.html (19 July 2007).
Author(s) of this contribution:
Claudia von Collani
Version: 1.00