Keith Allan Brueckner (born 19.03.1924) was an American theoretical physicist and a member of the National Academy of Sciences (1969). He was born in Minneapolis, where he graduated from the university in 1945. In 1950 he received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy from the University of California (at Berkeley). In 1951—55 he worked at Indiana University, in 1956 — 59 he was professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and from 1959 at the University of California (San Diego).
His research concerned meson physics, the theory of nuclear matter and of nuclear forces, mathematical physics, the theory of many-body systems, the physics of elementary particles, laser thermonuclear fusion and superconductivity. Together with K. Watson he studied the important part played by isospin in the production of a meson (1951), worked out a theory of the photoproduction of mesons (1952) and developed (1953) an effective method of solving scattering problems (the Brueckner — Watson scattering theory) and a phenomenological theory of the scattering of π-mesons by protons. He studied various aspects of nuclear forces and the scattering of virtual mesons by two interacting nucleons.
The D. Heineman Prize (1963).