Scientific legacy of Stanley Ruby
Stanley L. Ruby (1924-2004) made major contributions to Mossbauer spectroscopy and was the first to suggest the feasibility of observing the Mossbauer effect using synchrotron radiation. In this article we recall his scientific legacy that have inspired his scientific colleagues.
During his active scientific career, Stanley Ruby always addressed most fundamental aspects of physics without being a "reductionist" - asking questions regarding the fundamental interaction of electromagnetic waves with matter - nucleons, atoms, molecules and the condensed matter, and answering these questions with unique demonstration experiments. This recollection paper is intended to be a brief compilation of Stanley Ruby's selected contributions. They are creation and annihilation of acoustic phonons, chopped gamma-rays, and jump diffusion in condensed matter. In addition, Ruby's nuclear physics background fitted best for him to identify many new candidate nuclear resonant transitions across the nuclear periodic table; and his grasp of chemical physics led to the development of isomer shift systematic among isoelectronic compounds of 5s-5p atoms. Finally, Ruby's most pragmatic suggestion in 1974 to use synchrotron radiation to observe nuclear resonance, and its eventual demonstration, addressed many fundamental aspects of collective nuclear excitation process and gamma-ray coherence. Furthermore it opened many new avenues of application of the tool to a broader area of science which otherwise would have been impossible with the traditional approach of using radioactive sources in performing Mossbauer spectroscopy measurements.