John M. Dawson, 71, an internationally known professor of physics at UCLA whose invention of an isotope separation process has been used to save many lives from prostate cancer, died in his sleep Nov. 17.
Dawson was a leading figure in the physics of high-temperature plasmas for more than four decades, and his scientific contributions span all of plasma physics. He is regarded as the father of both plasma-based accelerators and the computer simulation of plasmas.
