Francis F. Chen

Francis F. Chen (born November 18, 1929) is a Chinese-born American plasma physicist and electrical engineer.

In 1954, Chen worked at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), where he worked initially with the Model B1 Stellarator, a device used to confine hot plasma with magnetic fields in order to sustain a controlled nuclear fusion reaction.

With the B1 Stellarator, Chen was the first to show that electrons could be trapped by a magnetic field for millions of traverses.

In 1969, Chen became a professor of electrical engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles.

He wrote a very well known and highly regarded Introductory plasma physics textbook (see below).