Michael Fisher
Pictures, Models, Approximations and Reality:
Phase Transitions and Our Understanding of the Physical World
Wednesday, November 04, 1998
8:00 pm (Reserved seats held until 7:50 pm)
Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, Main Seminar Room
What is the role of the theorist in modern science?" A domino game on a large checkerboard, the rapier-like specific heat of super fluid helium, and the visual effects seen when a liquid and its vapor merge to form a supercritical fluid will be invoked to address this question. The power of analogy based on physical pictures and simple models will be illustrated in the context of recent ideas concerning phase transitions and critical phenomena in fluids and magnets, in superfluids and polymers.Michael Fisher is Distinguished University Professor and Regents Professor at the Institute for Physical Science and Technology at the University of Maryland at College Park. He is currently working in the areas of statistical mechanics, the theory of condensed matter, and physical chemistry as well as associated foundational and mathematical problems. His contributions to the theory of critical phenomena and phase transitions have been seminal.
A fellow of the Royal Society of London, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society, he is the recipient of the Langmuir Prize in Chemical Physics of the American Physical Society, the Guthrie Medal of the Institute of Physics, the Boltzmann Medal for Statistical Physics, the Wolf Prize in Physics, the Hildebrand Award of the American Chemical Society and the first Lars Onsager Memorial Prize of the American Physical Society.
