Physicist, Author. He received notoriety as an American physicist, who played a role in the pioneer days of the development of quantum mechanics eventually leading to the development of the atomic bomb during World War II. In 1930 he co-authored with Nobel Prize Chemistry recipient, Harold Clayton Urey, to write the text “Atoms Molecules.” The textbook, which was the first written on this subject in the English language, became the standard for study for scholars for many years. After graduating with a Bachelor's Degree in the Arts as a cum laude candidate at John Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland in 1921, he received his Masters Degree in 1923, and his PhD in 1924 at the same university. He became a member of Atomic Structure Section of the Federal Bureau of Standards in Washington, D.C. from 1922 to 1926. He held several positions afterward: assistant professor of Physics at Yale University from 1926 to 1927, with research in oil production at Mellon Institute in Pittsburgh from 1927 to 1929, and then for one year, he was chief of physics division of the Gulf Research Laboratory. From 1930 to 1934, he was assistant professor of Physics at the University of Pittsburgh. In 1934, he held the Kenan Research Professorship in the physics department at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After World War II, he helped to establish the graduate program at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa staying until 1956 while holding the Temerson Research Professorship. The same year he published “Material for the McKinney Report-Progress Toward Fusion.” From 1957 to 1966, he directed the United States program for the controlled fusion power at the Atomic Energy Commission. Other text books that he published were “ Multiple Electron Transmissions and Prime Special Terms” in 1925 and “Atomic Physics” in 1933. He also published for professional periodicals numerous articles on critical potentials, spectroscopy, wave mechanics, indetermination principle, radio activity and nuclear physics. The oldest of two sons of Oliver Miles Ruark and his wife Margaret Gordon Smith, he had a serious, yet meek, humble personality. He was not a person who sought notoriety; in fact, he became annoyed with colleagues who did. He married a scientist, Grace Hazen in 1927. William Grough's biography, “ Arthur E. Ruark,” was published in the professional periodical “Physics Today” in September of 1979.