John Lawrence Cardy FRS (born 19 March 1947, England)Guggenheim Foundation: Annual Report 1985. is a British-

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

theoretical

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 caus ...

at the

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 ...

. He is best known for his work in theoretical

condensed matter physics Condensed matter physics is the field of physics that deals with the macroscopic and microscopic physical properties of matter, especially the solid and liquid phases which arise from electromagnetic forces between atoms. More generally, the sub ...

and

statistical mechanics In physics, statistical mechanics is a mathematical framework that applies statistical methods and probability theory to large assemblies of microscopic entities. It does not assume or postulate any natural laws, but explains the macroscopic be ...

, and in particular for research on

critical phenomena In physics, critical phenomena is the collective name associated with the physics of critical points. Most of them stem from the divergence of the correlation length, but also the dynamics slows down. Critical phenomena include scaling relations ...

and

two-dimensional conformal field theory A two-dimensional conformal field theory is a quantum field theory on a Euclidean two-dimensional space, that is invariant under local conformal transformations. In contrast to other types of conformal field theories, two-dimensional conformal fie ...

. He was an undergraduate and postgraduate student at Downing College,

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

, before moving to the

University of California, Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Barbara County, California, Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduate ...

, where he joined the faculty in 1977. In 1993, he moved to the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

, where until 2014 he was a

Fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

All Souls College All Souls College (official name: College of the Souls of All the Faithful Departed) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Unique to All Souls, all of its members automatically become fellows (i.e., full members of t ...

(now Emeritus) and a

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

Physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

in the Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics. He currently holds a Visiting Professorship at the

. He was elected as a

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...

in 1991, received the Dirac Medal of the IoP in 2000, was awarded the Lars Onsager Prize by the

APS APS or Aps or aps or similar may refer to: Education * Abbottabad Public School * Adarsh Public School, a public school in New Delhi, India * Alamogordo Public Schools * Albuquerque Public Schools, New Mexico, US school district * Allendale Publ ...

in 2004, the

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 ...

IUPAP 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 ...

in 2010, and the Dirac Medal of the

International Centre for Theoretical Physics The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) is an international research institute for physical and mathematical sciences that operates under a tripartite agreement between the Italian Government, United Nations Education ...

in 2011. He is most known for his contributions to conformal field theory. The

Cardy formula In physics, the Cardy formula gives the entropy of a two-dimensional conformal field theory (CFT). In recent years, this formula has been especially useful in the calculation of the entropy of BTZ black holes and in checking the AdS/CFT corresponde ...

for black hole entropy, the Cardy formula in percolation theory,arXiv:hep-th/9111026v1
and the Cardy conditions in boundary conformal field theory are named after him.

Selected works

*
Scaling and renormalization in statistical physics
'. Cambridge University Press, 1996 * with Krzysztof Gawędzki, Gregory Falkovich:
Non equilibrium statistical mechanics and turbulence
'. London Mathematical Society Lecture notes, Cambridge University Press, 2008 * ''Conformal Invariance and Statistical Mechanics''. in Les Houches Lectures, vol. 49, 1988 * as editor: ''Finite Size Scaling''. Elsevier 1988
Cardy ''Conformal Invariance in Percolation, Self-Avoiding Walks and Related Problems'', 2002

Cardy ''Conformal field theory and statistical mechanics'', Les Houches Lectures 2008

Cardy, Pasquale Calabrese ''Entanglement entropy and conformal field theory'', J. Phys. A, 42, 2009

Cardy ''Entanglement entropy in extended quantum systems'', 2007

References

External links

John Cardy's homepage
Living people British physicists American physicists Alumni of Downing College, Cambridge Fellows of All Souls College, Oxford Fellows of Downing College, Cambridge Institute for Advanced Study visiting scholars Fellows of the Royal Society 1947 births {{UK-physicist-stub