John Scales Avery

Early life

Avery’s parents were both born in the United States, in the state of Michigan, where they studied at the University of Michigan. His father studied medicine while his mother studied bacteriology. After graduation, his parents did research together at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Later, his father did research in a borderline area between physics and medicine with Compton effect", at the University of Chicago. In 1926, his father moved the family to Beirut, where his father worked as a professor of anatomy at the American University of Beirut. The family stayed in Beirut until the start of World War II. It was during these tumultuous years that John Scales Avery was born.

Education

• 1950 - graduated, Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass
• 1954 - B.Sc., physics, M.I.T
• 1955 - M.Sc., physics, University of Chicago
• 1965 - Ph.D., theoretical chemistry, Imperial College, London

Thermodynamics

Main article: Entropy and life

In his recent 2003 book Information Theory and Evolution, Avery combines information theory with Gibbs free energy that enters the biosphere from outside sources."^[1]

Activism

  Since 1990, Avery has been the Contact Person for Denmark the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. In 1995, Avery was part of a group that shared in the Nobel Peace Prize for their work in the 1990s in organizing the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. In 1998, Avery was elected to the Danish Peace Commission. During the years 1988-97, Avery was the Technical Advisor at the World Health Organization, Regional Office for Europe. In 2004, Avery became the Chairman of the Danish Peace Academy.

Books

• Avery, John. (2005). Science and Society , 2nd Ed. (PDF, 375 pgs.). Copenhagen: H.C. Orsted Institute.
• Avery, John. (2004). Calculus and Differential Equations – an introductory book. (PDF, 135 pgs.). University of Copenhagen: Pari New Learning Publications.
• Avery, John. (2002). Space-Age Science and Stone-Age Politics (PDF, 272 pgs.) Danish Peace Academy: Danish Pugwash Group.
• Avery, John (1997) Progress, Poverty and Population, Frank Cass, London, (1997)

Scientific books:

• Hyperspherical Harmonics and Generalized Sturmians, by J. Avery, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, Netherlands, 2000
• Hyperspherical Harmonics; Applictions in Quantum Theory, by J. Avery, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 1989
• Creation and Annihilation Operators, by J. Avery, McGraw-Hill, 1976
• The Quantum Theory of Atoms, Molecules and Photons, by J. Avery, McGraw-Hill, 1972

As well as more than 130 publications.

References