Oscar E. Vilches Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-11-05
An experimental physicist who developed low-temperature apparatus and studied atoms and molecules adsorbed on surfaces. At Washington he built a dilution refrigerator operating down to about 0.015 K, enabling measurements of thin helium, hydrogen and oxygen films. Combining thermodynamic measurements with neutron scattering helps reveal how confinement to a surface changes the behavior of matter.[ref]