Leo Kadanoff
Leo Philip Kadanoff ( born January 14, 1937 in New York City ) is Emeritus Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Chicago.
Leo Kadanoff graduated (1958, Master Degree) and his doctorate in 1960 from Harvard University. After a two year post-doctoral period at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, he got in 1962 as an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, where he in 1963 associate professor and in 1965 became a professor ( his work areas were then initially the theory of superconductivity and the way work on heat Shields ballistic Missile ). In 1965 he was a visiting professor at the University of Cambridge. 1966/67, he did pioneering work in the theory of phase transitions ( scaling behavior, universality ). 1969 to 1978 he was a professor at Brown University, where he among other things, Methods of statistical mechanics to models of urban growth anwandte (used in planning work in Rhode Iceland from 1973 to 1978 ) and further research in solid state physics. From the mid- 1970s he turned to the study of phase transitions, this time in quantum field theory and lattice gauge theories ( Migdal - Kadanoff recursion relations, etc.). From 1978 he was professor at the University of Chicago ( McArthur Professor ). 1981 to 1984 and 1994 to 1997 he was director of the Materials Research Laboratory at the University of Chicago. In the 1980s his interest and chaos theory, disordered systems and the theory of turbulence turned to. He wrote several well-known textbooks and review articles, and is also by columns eg known in Physics Today.
In 1980 he was awarded for his work on the theory of phase transitions, the Wolf Prize in Physics, jointly with Kenneth Wilson and Michael Fisher. In 1977 he was awarded the Oliver E. Buckley Prize for Solid State Physics of the American Physical Society, 1989, the Boltzmann Medal. He received the 1998 Onsager Price and 1999, the National Medal of Science. From the University of Chicago, he received the Quantrell Award for his teaching services. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (since 1978), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. In 2006 he was awarded the Lorentz Medal.
2007 was Leo Kadanoff president of the American Physical Society.
Works (selection)
- From order to chaos I, II essays, critical, chaotic and otherwise. World Scientific 1993, ISBN 981-02-1198-8, Vol.2 1999, ISBN 981-02-3434-1
- Statistical Physics - Statics, dynamics and renormalization. World Scientific 2000, ISBN 981-02-3764-2
- Application of Renormalization Group techniques to quarks and strings. In: Reviews of Modern Physics. 1977, p 267-296
- With Baym: Quantum statistical mechanics. Benjamin 1962