Kurt Wiesenfeld 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 caus ...

working primarily on

non-linear dynamics In mathematics, a dynamical system is a system in which a function describes the time dependence of a point in an ambient space. Examples include the mathematical models that describe the swinging of a clock pendulum, the flow of water in a ...

. His works primarily concern stochastic resonance, spontaneous synchronization of

coupled oscillators Oscillation is the repetitive or periodic variation, typically in time, of some measure about a central value (often a point of equilibrium) or between two or more different states. Familiar examples of oscillation include a swinging pendulum ...

, and non-linear

laser A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The word "laser" is an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation". The fir ...

dynamics. Since 1987, he has been professor of physics at the

Georgia Institute of Technology The Georgia Institute of Technology, commonly referred to as Georgia Tech or, in the state of Georgia, as Tech or The Institute, is a public research university and institute of technology in Atlanta, Georgia. Established in 1885, it is part of ...

Life and work

Kurt Wiesenfeld received his Bachelor of Science in Physics from the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology 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 ...

in 1979, after which he moved to

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 ...

and received his doctorate in 1985. From 1984 to 1985 he was a Lecturer and Research Scientist at the

University of California at Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California system. Located on Monterey Bay, on the edge o ...

. In 1987, as a post-doctoral research scientist in the Solid State Theory Group of

Brookhaven National Laboratory Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory located in Upton, Long Island, and was formally established in 1947 at the site of Camp Upton, a former U.S. Army base and Japanese internment c ...

, he and another fellow post-doctoral scientist,

Chao Tang Tang Chao (; born 1958) is a Chair Professor of Physics and Systems Biology at Peking University. Education He had his undergraduate training at the University of Science and Technology of China, then went to the United States through the C ...

, along with their mentor,

Per Bak Per Bak (8 December 1948 – 16 October 2002) was a Danish theoretical physicist who coauthored the 1987 academic paper that coined the term "self-organized criticality." Life and work After receiving his Ph.D. from the Technical University of ...

, presented new ideas in group organization with a concept they coined

self-organized criticality Self-organized criticality (SOC) is a property of dynamical systems that have a critical point as an attractor. Their macroscopic behavior thus displays the spatial or temporal scale-invariance characteristic of the critical point of a phase ...

in their paper in ''

Physical Review Letters ''Physical Review Letters'' (''PRL''), established in 1958, is a peer-reviewed, scientific journal that is published 52 times per year by the American Physical Society. As also confirmed by various measurement standards, which include the ''Journa ...

.'' The first discovered example of a

dynamical system In mathematics, a dynamical system is a system in which a Function (mathematics), function describes the time dependence of a Point (geometry), point in an ambient space. Examples include the mathematical models that describe the swinging of a ...

displaying such self-organized criticality was named after them as the Bak–Tang–Wiesenfeld "sandpile" model. Wiesenfeld is currently a fellow of the

American Physical Society The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of k ...

, a member of the Executive Committee of the American Physical Society's Division of Biological Physics, and a member of the

Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) is a professional society dedicated to applied mathematics, computational science, and data science through research, publications, and community. SIAM is the world's largest scientific socie ...

(SIAM).

Selected publications

* * *

References

External links

Georgia Institute of Technology School of Physics

"Making the Grade"---an article published in Newsweek by Wiesenfeld

Self-organized criticality: An explanation of the 1/f noise
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wiesenfeld, Kurt 21st-century American physicists Georgia Tech faculty Fellows of the American Physical Society Probability theorists Living people Year of birth missing (living people)