Draft:M. Lawrence Glasser

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M. Lawrence "Larry" Glasser (born October 5, 1933 in Crookston, MN) is a professor emeritus of physics at Clarkson University. He received his B.A. from the University of Chicago and his M.S. from the University of Wisconsin (Madison), both in mathematics, and his Ph.D. in physics from Carnegie Mellon University (then Carnegie Institute of Technology) in Pittsburgh, PA, in 1962. Glasser married Judith Sensibar (1936–2015) on August 22, 1956, and together they raised four children.

Glasser worked as a research scientist from 1962 to 1974 for Battelle Institute in Columbus, Ohio. He then worked as a professor of physics and mathematics at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, before joining the faculty at Clarkson University (Potsdam, NY) as a professor of physics, mathematics, and computer science, with interests in theoretical solid state physics, semiconductor nanostructures, and applied mathematics. Glasser retired from and was awarded emeritus status at Clarkson in 2008.

Beginning in 1996, Glasser began spending winters as a visiting professor and advisor at the Universidad de Valladolid in Spain. His relationship with the university continued until 2020.

According to his nephew, Edoh Amiran, Glasser’s large body of published work ranges over many topics in physics, physical chemistry, computational mathematics, and number theory, using such methods as combinatorics, series, geometric symmetries, and physical symmetries.

For example, an article appearing in 1962 and based on Glasser's Ph.D. research, solves equations describing conductivity in an electron gas with certain properties. Building on generalizations of a previous model with much simpler properties, these solutions begin with complex valued functions and equations involving differential and integral quantities. The article employs clever substitutions, properties of the functions derived from physical symmetries, arguments about representations for the functions using expansions, and combinatorial arguments.

During his long career, Glasser has provided exact solutions using expressions or implicitly given functions that again rely on judicious choices of variables, representations in terms of series (sometimes up to a certain order), and properties of special functions.

Some of Glasser's published articles give results for such special functions as series whose terms are Bessel functions with coefficients that are functions in some of the variables. While the purpose of using such series is to solve equations in physics, they employ only mathematical techniques; the same is true of transforms used on functions from number theory. Thus over the years, Glasser has developed one of the largest toolboxes of mathematical techniques for solving many equations and giving estimates for important functions in physics.

Glasser continues to be actively engaged in research.