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by David
F. Salisbury
 As
a child,
Peter
Cummings
liked
nothing
better
than
building
things
with
his
erector
set,
or “meccano”
as it
was
called
in Australia.
He grew
up in
Newcastle,
an industrial
center
on the
Australian
coast
100
miles
north
of Sydney,
where
surfing
was
a varsity
sport.
But
heart
surgery
when
he was
15 kept
him
from
participating
in contact
sports
for
several
years,
including
surfing.
That
restriction,
plus
his
curiosity
about
how
things
work,
led
him
to more
intellectual
pursuits
and
his
interest
in science
was
sparked
by a
charismatic
physics
teacher
in high
school.
“Because
of his
influence
I decided
I was
going
to be
a physics
professor,
although
I had
no idea
what
that
meant,”
Cummings
said.
As
a result,
he was
the
first
person
in his
family
to go
to college.
When
he enrolled
in the
University
of Newcastle,
however,
he quickly
became
bored
with
the
undergraduate
physics
courses
he was
required
to take.
“Fortunately,
the
chairman
of the
math
department
recruited
me,”
Cummings
recalled.
After
switching
majors,
he developed
a passion
for
statistical
mechanics,
a subject
that
he pursued
when
he enrolled
in the
doctoral
program
in mathematics
at the
University
of Melbourne.
A post
doctoral
fellowship
from
the
Australian
government
took
him
to the
physics
department
at the
University
of Guelph
in Canada.
Then
a research
associate
position
in chemistry
brought
him
to the
State
University
of New
York
at Stony
Brook
to study
with
George
Stell,
a leading
authority
in liquid
state
statistical
physics.
In 1982,
he and
Stell
achieved
some
notoriety
by publishing
an analysis
pinpointing
a number
of serious
failings
in the
predominant
theory
of molecular
fluids.
To this
day,
the
flaws
that
they
identified
have
not
been
corrected
so researchers
in the
field
are
forced
to employ
various
“work
arounds”
to make
the
theory
useful.
As he
was
finishing
up time
at Stony
Brook,
the
chemical
engineering
department
at the
University
of Virginia
offered
him
a faculty
position.
“They
were
pretty
courageous
because
this
was
before
molecular
modeling
had
proven
itself
to be
one
of the
‘key
enabling
areas’
of chemical
engineering
research
as it
has
today,”
Cummings
said.
In 1983,
it took
several
minutes
of processing
time
for
his
visualization
software
to produce
a single
image.
Today,
because
of the
tremendous
increase
in computer
power,
Cummings
can
create
movies
of molecular
motions
with
thousands
of frames
on an
off-the-shelf
laptop.
Of course,
he still
uses
some
of the
biggest
supercomputers
in the
world
to crunch
his
toughest
simulations.
Because
Cummings
had
moved
into
an engineering
position,
he shifted
his
attention
from
theoretical
to more
applied
problems.
While
on sabbatical
at Oak
Ridge
National
Laboratory
in 1991,
for
example,
he produced
a simulation
of the
molecular
structure
of supercritical
water
—
water
heated
beyond
its
boiling
point
to very
high
temperatures
and
pressures.
He credits
the
joint
work
he and
ORNL
scientists
did
on this
simulation
with
the
lab’s
decision
several
years
later
to offer
him
a distinguished
scientist
position.
After
he moved
to Tennessee,
the
supercritical
water
simulation
became
the
center
of controversy
when
a neutron
scattering
experiment
got
results
that
conflicted
with
its
predictions.
Follow-up
theory
and
experiments
showed
that
the
initial
scattering
results
were
wrong
and
his
model’s
predictions
were
accurate
after
all.
In recent
years,
Cummings
has
been
concentrating
his
modeling
efforts
on various
nanoscale
projects:
nano-composite
materials;
the
action
of friction
at the
nanometer
scale;
and
how
fluids
act
when
confined
to nanoscale
containers.
In addition
to serving
on Vanderbilt’s
faculty,
he will
continue
his
position
as director
of the
Nanomaterials
Theory
Institute
at ORNL.
“Molecular
modelers
like
myself
have
been
working
at the
nanoscale
for
decades,
and
we’ve
had
difficulty
moving
up to
larger
scales,”
Cummings
said.
“So
we’re
very
glad
to see
everyone
else
coming
down
to our
level.”
Posted
on 9/23,
2002
at 12:30
p.m.
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