Harry Eugene Stanley (born March 28, 1941) is an American
physicist
A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe.
Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...
and University
Professor
Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors ...
at
Boston University
Boston University (BU) is a Private university, private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with ...
. He has made seminal contributions to
statistical physics
Statistical physics is a branch of physics that evolved from a foundation of statistical mechanics, which uses methods of probability theory and statistics, and particularly the mathematical tools for dealing with large populations and approxim ...
and is one of the pioneers of interdisciplinary science. His current research focuses on understanding the anomalous behavior of liquid water, but he had made fundamental contributions to complex systems, such as quantifying correlations among the constituents of the
Alzheimer brain, and quantifying fluctuations in noncoding and coding
DNA sequences, interbeat intervals of the healthy and diseased heart. He is one of the founding fathers of
econophysics
Econophysics is a heterodox interdisciplinary research field, applying theories and methods originally developed by physicists in order to solve problems in economics, usually those including uncertainty or stochastic processes and nonlinear dynam ...
.
Education
Stanley obtained his B.A. in physics at
Wesleyan University
Wesleyan University ( ) is a private liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut. Founded in 1831 as a men's college under the auspices of the Methodist Episcopal Church and with the support of prominent residents of Middletown, the col ...
in 1962.
He performed biological physics research with
Max Delbrück
Max Ludwig Henning Delbrück (; September 4, 1906 – March 9, 1981) was a German–American biophysicist who participated in launching the molecular biology research program in the late 1930s. He stimulated physical scientists' interest int ...
in 1963 and was awarded a
Ph.D.
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...
in physics from
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...
in 1967.
Stanley was a Miller Fellow at
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
with
Charles Kittel
Charles Kittel (July 18, 1916 – May 15, 2019) was an American physicist. He was a professor at University of California, Berkeley from 1951 and was professor emeritus from 1978 until his death.
Life and work
Charles Kittel was born in New Yo ...
, where he wrote an Oxford monograph
''Introduction to Phase Transitions and Critical Phenomena'' which won the
Choice Award for Outstanding Academic Book of 1971.
Academic career
Stanley was appointed Assistant Professor of Physics at
MIT
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...
in 1969 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 1971. He was appointed
Hermann von Helmholtz
Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz (31 August 1821 – 8 September 1894) was a German physicist and physician who made significant contributions in several scientific fields, particularly hydrodynamic stability. The Helmholtz Associatio ...
Associate Professor in 1973, in recognition of his interdepartmental teaching and research with the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology. In 1976, Stanley joined Boston University as Professor of Physics, and Associate Professor of Physiology (in the School of Medicine). In 1978 and 1979, he was promoted to Professor of Physiology and University Professor, respectively. Since 2007 he holds joint appointments with the Chemistry and Biomedical Engineering Departments. In 2011, he was made William F. Warren Distinguished Professor. In the spring of 2013, he held the Lorentz Professorship at the University of Leiden.
Research and achievements
Stanley had fundamental contributions to several topics in
statistical physics
Statistical physics is a branch of physics that evolved from a foundation of statistical mechanics, which uses methods of probability theory and statistics, and particularly the mathematical tools for dealing with large populations and approxim ...
, such as the theory of
phase transition
In chemistry, thermodynamics, and other related fields, a phase transition (or phase change) is the physical process of transition between one state of a medium and another. Commonly the term is used to refer to changes among the basic states o ...
s, percolation, disordered systems, aggregation phenomena,
polymer
A polymer (; Greek '' poly-'', "many" + ''-mer'', "part")
is a substance or material consisting of very large molecules called macromolecules, composed of many repeating subunits. Due to their broad spectrum of properties, both synthetic a ...
s, econophysics and biological physics. His early work introduced the n-vector model of
magnetism and its exact solution in the limit nà infinity, topics that are now part of standard statistical physics textbooks.
His seminal work on liquid water started with a percolation model he developed with Texeira to explain the experimentally observed anticorrelations in entropy and volume
2O
and D2O at Low Temperatures: Tests of a Percolation Model” J. Chem. Phys. 73, 3404–3422 (1980)">. E. Stanley and J. Teixeira, “Interpretation of The Unusual Behavior of H2O
and D2O at Low Temperatures: Tests of a Percolation Model” J. Chem. Phys. 73, 3404–3422 (1980) In 1992 he developed the
liquid-liquid critical point hypothesis, that offered a quantitative understanding of water’s anomalies, applying to all liquids with tetrahedral symmetry (such as silicon and silica). Direct experimental proof for his proposal was obtained by recent experiments in Tsukuba, MIT, and Stanford.
Stanley coined the term ‘econophysics’ in 1994 to denote the field of physics dealing with economic phenomena. His group has found empirical laws governing economic fluctuations, and proposed statistical mechanics models to explain their origins.
The ISI Web of Science, lists 76,778 citations to Stanley's work (excluding 33 books). Using the Hirsch ''H'' Index metric for publication impact
NAS 102, 16569 (2005) Stanley has authored 129 papers with a citation count equal to or greater than 129, so ''H'' = 129. Google Scholar lists over 200,000 citations, with ''H'' = 201.
Stanley is committed to education at all levels, from high school to graduate studies. He has served as thesis advisor to 114 Ph.D. students and has collaborated with 211 postdoctoral fellows and visiting faculty. He is also active in worldwide efforts for achieving gender balance in the physical sciences.
Honors and awards
Stanley has been elected to the
U.S. National Academy of Sciences (2004),
the
Brazilian Academy of Sciences
The Brazilian Academy of Sciences ( pt, italic=yes, Academia Brasileira de Ciências or ''ABC'') is the national academy of Brazil. It is headquartered in the city of Rio de Janeiro and was founded on May 3, 1916.
Publications
It publishes a lar ...
. He is an Honorary Member of the
Hungarian Physical Society. He is currently
Honorary Professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies,
University of Pavia
The University of Pavia ( it, Università degli Studi di Pavia, UNIPV or ''Università di Pavia''; la, Alma Ticinensis Universitas) is a university located in Pavia, Lombardy, Italy. There was evidence of teaching as early as 1361, making it one ...
(
Pavia
Pavia (, , , ; la, Ticinum; Medieval Latin: ) is a town and comune of south-western Lombardy in northern Italy, south of Milan on the lower Ticino river near its confluence with the Po. It has a population of c. 73,086. The city was the cap ...
,
Italy
Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...
), and at
Eötvös Loránd University (
Budapest
Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...
,
Hungary
Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the ...
). Stanley awarded the 2004
APS Nicholson Medal for Humanitarian Service, "''For his extraordinary contributions to human rights, for his initiatives on behalf of female physicists, and for his caring and supportive relationship with those who have worked in his laboratory.''"
For his contributions to phase transitions Stanley received the
2004
Boltzmann Medal
The Boltzmann Medal (or Boltzmann Award) is a prize awarded to physicists that obtain new results concerning statistical mechanics; it is named after the celebrated physicist Ludwig Boltzmann. The Boltzmann Medal is awarded once every three years ...
, awarded by
International Union of Pure and Applied Physics
The International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP ) is an international non-governmental organization whose mission is to assist in the worldwide development of physics, to foster international cooperation in physics, and to help in the ...
(IUPAP), and the
American Physical Society 2008
Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize
The Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize of the American Physical Society, to remember Julius Edgar Lilienfeld, has been awarded annually, since 1989. (It was not awarded in 2002). The purpose of the Prize is to recognize outstanding contributions to phy ...
.
He was awarded the Teresiana Medal in Complex Systems Research
given by the University of Pavia. He also received the Distinguished
Teaching Scholar Director's Award from the
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...
, the Nicholson Medal for Human Outreach from the
American Physical Society, a
Guggenheim Fellowship (1979),
the David Turnbull Prize from the
Materials Research Society
The Materials Research Society (MRS) is a non-profit, professional organization for materials researchers, scientists and engineers. Established in 1973, MRS is a member-driven organization of approximately 14,000 materials researchers from academi ...
(1998),
a BP Venture Research Award, the Floyd K. Richtmyer Memorial Lectureship Award (1997),
the Memory Ride Award for Alzheimer Research,
and the Massachusetts Professor of the Year
awarded by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education.
Stanley has received nine Doctorates Honoris Causa, from
Bar-Ilan University
Bar-Ilan University (BIU, he, אוניברסיטת בר-אילן, ''Universitat Bar-Ilan'') is a public research university in the Tel Aviv District city of Ramat Gan, Israel. Established in 1955, Bar Ilan is Israel's second-largest academi ...
Ramat Gan
Ramat Gan ( he, רָמַת גַּן or , ) is a city in the Tel Aviv District of Israel, located east of the municipality of Tel Aviv and part of the Tel Aviv metropolitan area. It is home to one of the world's major diamond exchanges, and man ...
, (
Israel
Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
),
Eötvös Loránd University (Budapest).
University of Liège
The University of Liège (french: Université de Liège), or ULiège, is a major public university of the French Community of Belgium based in Liège, Wallonia, Belgium. Its official language is French. As of 2020, ULiège is ranked in the 301 ...
(
Belgium
Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to th ...
),
University of Dortmund
TU Dortmund University (german: Technische Universität Dortmund) is a technical university in Dortmund, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany with over 35,000 students, and over 6,000 staff including 300 professors, offering around 80 Bachelor's and ...
,
University of Wroclaw
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, th ...
,
Northwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world.
Charte ...
,
University of Messina
The University of Messina ( it, Università degli Studi di Messina; Latin: ''Studiorum Universitas Messanae''), known colloquially as UniME, is a state university located in Messina, Sicily, Italy. Founded in 1548 by Pope Paul III, it was the wor ...
,
University of Leicester
, mottoeng = So that they may have life
, established =
, type = public research university
, endowment = £20.0 million
, budget = £326 million
, chancellor = David Willetts
, vice_chancellor = Nishan Canagarajah
, head_lab ...
, and the
IMT Institute for Advanced Studies Lucca
IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca ( it, Scuola IMT Alti Studi Lucca) is a public research institution and a graduate school located in Lucca, Italy. It was founded in 2005 under the name of IMT Institute for Advanced Studies, where the ac ...
.
See also
*
List of members of the National Academy of Sciences (Applied physical sciences)
Notes
External links
*
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*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Stanley, H. Eugene
1941 births
Living people
21st-century American physicists
Boston University faculty
Harvard University alumni
University of California, Berkeley alumni
Harvard University faculty
Wesleyan University alumni
Probability theorists
Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
Fellows of the American Physical Society
Network scientists
Statistical physicists