From 1979-1982 he was an instructor at Pusan National University, Korea, and from 1988-1989 a Staff Research Physicist at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.
He served three years as deputy director for technical operations at Princeton University's Plasma Physics Laboratory in Princeton, New Jersey.
Inspired by the fascinating but erroneous claims of controlled fusion achieved in Argentina by Ronald Richter, Spitzer was stimulated enough by the news to give further thought to fusion.
Afterwards he was a research associate scientist at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and from 1970 a full member of the research staff.
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Research centered on three plasma confinement designs; the stellarator headed by Lyman Spitzer at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, the toroidal pinch or Perhapsatron led by James Tuck at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the magnetic mirror devices at the Livermore National Laboratory led by Richard F. Post.
The Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) was an experimental tokamak built at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (in Princeton, New Jersey) circa 1980.