Thomas Fink | |
---|---|
Born | 1972 New York City, U.S. |
Nationality | American, British |
Alma mater | Caltech Cambridge |
Awards | Fisher Prize (Physics) |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Physics |
Institutions | University of Cambridge École normale supérieure Curie Institute London Institute for Mathematical Sciences University of Cambridge |
Doctoral advisor | Robin Ball |
Other academic advisors | Bernard Derrida |
Website | www |
Thomas Fink (born 1972) is an Anglo-American physicist, author and entrepreneur. He has published papers in statistical physics and its applications, written two books and designed an iPhone app. He set up the London Institute for Mathematical Sciences and is a manager of research at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (French: Centre national de la recherche scientifique).
Fink did his BS at Caltech, where he won the annual Fisher Prize for top physicist and Green prize for best research.[ when? ] He then moved to England for his PhD at St John's College, Cambridge, where he was supervised by Robin Ball in the TCM group of the Cavendish Laboratory.[ when? ] He was a Research Fellow at Caius College, Cambridge and did a postdoc at École Normale Supérieure with Bernard Derrida. He now occupies his current positions at the London Institute and the CNRS.[ when? ]
Fink is a researcher in theoretical physics. He published his first paper in the journal Science at the age of 20 while at Caltech and received his PhD at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. Fink uses statistical mechanics to study complex systems in physics and interdisciplinary fields. He has recently studied role of strategy and serendipity in innovation. [1] [2] Other interests include evolvability, cellular automata, non-random expression, competition between agents, dynamics on networks, small boolean networks, self-assembly and non-coding DNA, according to his website.
According to his homepage, Fink's books have sold 1/3 million copies.
The 85 Ways to Tie a Tie , (with Yong Mao, Fourth Estate, London) is a cultural, historical and mathematical examination of ties and tie knots. It explains how the authors proved mathematically that there are a total of 85 distinct tie knots, most of which had not been previously known. The book includes a layman's account of the authors' mathematical papers which derived all possible knots capable of being tied with a standard necktie. [4] It has been published in 10 languages, including French, German, Hungarian, Portuguese and Italian.
The Man's Book (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Orion, Little, Brown) is a handbook of men's customs, habits and pursuits. It is organized by subject, with chapters on health, dress, sports, outdoors, drinking, eating and others. The author dedicates only a few pages to each section, and within that space tries to summarize the essentials as completely and densely as possible. The book was designed and typeset by the author. The Man's Book has been reviewed in The Times (UK), the Literary Review, the New Statesman, and has been translated into German, Italian, Russian and other languages. [5] In May 2009 IntuApps and Little, Brown released an iPhone application inspired by The Man's Book. The app hit the no. 1 spot in the Apple App Store, with over 1 million downloads, on 23 May 2009, according to the IntuApps website and Little, Brown. [6]
Fink founded the London Institute for Mathematical Sciences, [7] a non-profit institute for physics and mathematics research. In 2011 the London Institute became a registered charity in England and Wales. Located in Mayfair, London, LIMS is like a university research department, but with no teaching or administrative duties. It is private in the sense that it covers its own costs through research grants and donations. According to its website, "the London Institute gives scientists the freedom and support to do what they do best: make fundamental discoveries". As of 2014, it has six Fellows in addition to postdocs and visiting scientists.
Murray Gell-Mann was an American physicist who received the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the theory of elementary particles. He was the Robert Andrews Millikan Professor of Theoretical Physics Emeritus at the California Institute of Technology, a distinguished fellow and one of the co-founders of the Santa Fe Institute, a professor of physics at the University of New Mexico, and the Presidential Professor of Physics and Medicine at the University of Southern California.
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Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science, first published in French in 1997 as Impostures intellectuelles, is a book by physicists Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont. As part of the so-called science wars, Sokal and Bricmont criticize postmodernism in academia for the misuse of scientific and mathematical concepts in postmodern writing.
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The 85 Ways to Tie a Tie is a book by Thomas Fink and Yong Mao about the history of the knotted neckcloth, the modern necktie, and how to tie each. It is based on two mathematics papers published by the authors in Nature and Physica A while they were research fellows at Cambridge University’s Cavendish Laboratory. The authors prove that, assuming both the tie and the wearer to be of typical size, there are exactly 85 ways of tying a necktie using the conventional method of wrapping the wide end of the tie around the narrow end. They describe each and highlight those that they determine to be historically notable or aesthetically pleasing.
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