Gordon Baym

Last updated
Gordon Baym
Born (1935-07-01) July 1, 1935 (age 89)
Alma mater Cornell University
Harvard University
Known for Baym-Kadanoff functional
Awards Hans A. Bethe Prize (2002)
Lars Onsager Prize (2008)
Eugene Feenberg Memorial Medal (2011)

APS Medal for Exceptional Achievement in Research (2021)
Scientific career
Fields Physics
Institutions University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Doctoral advisor Julian Schwinger
Doctoral students Ruben Gerardo Barrera

Gordon Alan Baym (born July 1, 1935) is an American theoretical physicist.

Contents

Biography

Born in New York City, he graduated from the Brooklyn Technical High School, and received his undergraduate degree from Cornell University in 1956. He earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1960, studying under Julian Schwinger.

He joined the physics faculty of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1963, becoming a full professor in 1968. His areas of research include condensed-matter physics, nuclear physics and astrophysics, as well as the history of physics.

In 1962 he and Leo Kadanoff collaborated on Quantum Statistical Mechanics: Green's Function Methods in Equilibrium and Nonequilibrium Problems. In 1969 he published Lectures on Quantum Mechanics, a widely used graduate textbook that, unconventionally, begins with photon polarization. In 1991 he and Chris Pethick published the monograph Landau Fermi-Liquid Theory: Concepts and Applications.

Baym was awarded the Hans A. Bethe Prize in 2002 "For his superb synthesis of fundamental concepts which have provided an understanding of matter at extreme conditions, ranging from crusts and interiors of neutron stars to matter at ultrahigh temperature". [1] He also received the Lars Onsager Prize in 2008 "for fundamental applications of statistical physics to quantum fluids, including Fermi liquid theory and ground-state properties of dilute quantum gases, and for bringing a conceptual unity to these areas" [2] along with Christopher Pethick and Tin-Lun Ho.

He has four children, professors of communications Nancy Baym and Geoffrey Baym, mathematician and biologist Michael Baym, and cognitive neuroscientist Carol Baym. He was married to Nina Baym, a professor of English at the UIUC, and Lillian Hoddeson, a professor of history at UIUC.[ citation needed ]

Awards and honors

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lars Onsager</span> Norwegian-American physical chemist and theoretical physicist (1903-1976)

Lars Onsager was a Norwegian American physical chemist and theoretical physicist. He held the Gibbs Professorship of Theoretical Chemistry at Yale University. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1968.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anthony James Leggett</span> British–American physicist (born 1938)

Sir Anthony James Leggett is a British–American theoretical physicist and professor emeritus at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). Leggett is widely recognised as a world leader in the theory of low-temperature physics, and his pioneering work on superfluidity was recognised by the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physics. He has shaped the theoretical understanding of normal and superfluid helium liquids and strongly coupled superfluids. He set directions for research in the quantum physics of macroscopic dissipative systems and use of condensed systems to test the foundations of quantum mechanics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bertrand Halperin</span> American mathematician and physicist

Bertrand I. Halperin is an American physicist, former holder of the Hollis Chair of Mathematicks and Natural Philosophy at the physics department of Harvard University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leo Kadanoff</span> American physicist

Leo Philip Kadanoff was an American physicist. He was a professor of physics at the University of Chicago and a former president of the American Physical Society (APS). He contributed to the fields of statistical physics, chaos theory, and theoretical condensed matter physics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Giorgio Parisi</span> Italian physicist (born 1948)

Giorgio Parisi is an Italian theoretical physicist, whose research has focused on quantum field theory, statistical mechanics and complex systems. His best known contributions are the QCD evolution equations for parton densities, obtained with Guido Altarelli, known as the Altarelli–Parisi or DGLAP equations, the exact solution of the Sherrington–Kirkpatrick model of spin glasses, the Kardar–Parisi–Zhang equation describing dynamic scaling of growing interfaces, and the study of whirling flocks of birds. He was awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics jointly with Klaus Hasselmann and Syukuro Manabe for groundbreaking contributions to theory of complex systems, in particular "for the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales".

David Pines was a US physicist recognized for his work in quantum many-body systems in condensed matter and nuclear physics. With his advisor David Bohm, he contributed to the understanding of electron interactions in metals. Bohm and Pines introduced the plasmon, the quantum of electron density oscillations in metals. They pioneered the use of the random phase approximation. His work with John Bardeen on electron-phonon interactions led to the development of the BCS theory of superconductivity. Pines extended BCS theory to nuclear physics to explain stability of isotopes with even and odd numbers of nucleons. He also used the theory of superfluidity to explain the glitches in neutron stars.

Valery Leonidovich Pokrovsky is a Soviet and Russian physicist. He is a member of the Landau Institute in Chernogolovka near Moscow in Russia and a Distinguished Professor of Theoretical Physics and holder of the William R. Thurman ’58 Chair in Physics at Texas A&M University. He has twice received the Landau Prize of the Soviet Academy of Science, in 1984 and in 2018.

Alexander Borisovich Zamolodchikov is a Russian physicist, known for his contributions to conformal field theory, statistical mechanics, string theory and condensed matter physics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Ceperley</span> American theoretical physicist (born 1949)

David Matthew Ceperley is a theoretical physicist in the physics department at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign or UIUC. He is a world expert in the area of Quantum Monte Carlo computations, a method of calculation that is generally recognised to provide accurate quantitative results for many-body problems described by quantum mechanics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Subir Sachdev</span> Indian physicist

Subir Sachdev is Herchel Smith Professor of Physics at Harvard University specializing in condensed matter. He was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2014, received the Lars Onsager Prize from the American Physical Society and the Dirac Medal from the ICTP in 2018, and was elected Foreign Member of the Royal Society ForMemRS in 2023. He was a co-editor of the Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics 2017–2019, and is Editor-in-Chief of Reports on Progress in Physics 2022-.

Peter Hänggi is a theoretical physicist from Switzerland, Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Augsburg. He is best known for his original works on Brownian motion and the Brownian motor concept, stochastic resonance and dissipative systems. Other topics include, driven quantum tunneling, such as the discovery of coherent destruction of tunneling (CDT), phononics, relativistic statistical mechanics and the foundations of classical and quantum thermodynamics.

John Lawrence CardyFRS is a British–American theoretical physicist. He is best known for his work in theoretical condensed matter physics and statistical mechanics, and in particular for research on critical phenomena and two-dimensional conformal field theory.

John Charles Wheatley was an American experimental physicist who worked on quantum fluids at low and very low temperatures.

Lev Petrovich Pitaevskii was a Russian theoretical physicist, who made contributions to the theory of quantum mechanics, electrodynamics, low-temperature physics, plasma physics, and condensed matter physics. Together with his PhD supervisor Evgeny Lifshitz and with Vladimir Berestetskii, he was also the co-author of a few volumes of the influential Landau–Lifschitz Course of Theoretical Physics series. His academic status was professor.

The William I. Fine Theoretical Physics Institute is a research institute in the University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering. FTPI was largely the work of physics Professor Emeritus, Stephen Gasiorowicz and university alumnus and Twin Cities real-estate developer William I. Fine. The institute officially came into existence in January 1987. FTPI faculty consists of six permanent members: Andrey V. Chubukov, Alex Kamenev, Keith Olive, Maxim Pospelov, Mikhail Shifman, and Boris Shklovskii. The institute has on Oversight Committee consisting of ten members. The Oversight Committee is the board of directors that make decisions concerning the staffing and budgeting of the institute.

Eduardo Hector Fradkin is an Argentinian theoretical physicist known for working in various areas of condensed matter physics, primarily using quantum field theoretical approaches. He is a Donald Biggar Willett Professor of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, where he is the director of the Institute for Condensed Matter Theory, and is the author of the books Quantum Field Theory: An Integrated Approach and Field Theories of Condensed Matter Physics.

Tin-Lun "Jason" Ho is a Chinese-American theoretical physicist, specializing in condensed matter theory, quantum gases, and Bose-Einstein condensates. He is known for the Mermin-Ho relation.

Christopher John Pethick is a British theoretical physicist, specializing in many-body theory, ultra-cold atomic gases, and the physics of neutron stars and stellar collapse.

Balajapalli Sriram Shastry is an Indian-American condensed matter physicist, specializing in strongly-correlated Fermi systems, quantum integrable systems, and statistical mechanics.

References

  1. Prize Recipient
  2. Prize Recipient
  3. "Book of Members, 1780-2010: Chapter B" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved May 28, 2011.
  4. "Online directory". National Acacdemy of Sciences. Retrieved December 13, 2011.