Alexander Patashinski
Encyclopedia
Alexander Zakharovich Patashinski is a Research Professor at Northwestern University
in Evanston, Illinois
. He is known for his contributions in many parts of the theoretical physics, including phase transition
and critical phenomena, high energy physics, general relativity, amorphous materials. The announcement for the 1982 Nobel Prize in Physics
, which was awarded to Kenneth G. Wilson
, acknowledges Patashinski, along with B. Widom, Michael Fisher
, Valery Pokrovsky
, and Leo Kadanoff
, for important contributions to the theory of critical phenomena and renormalization group. In 1983, Patashinski and Pokrovsky
received the Landau Prize of the Academy of Sciences of USSR for these contributions
and the Kapitza Institute in Moscow, and from 1961 at the Institute of Thermophysics in Novosibirsk
Academgorodok. In 1962 and 1963, Patashinski, in collaboration with Valery Pokrovsky
and Isaak Khalatnikov, studied quasi-classical scattering in three dimensions using Regge theory
. He defended his PhD thesis (scientific advisor Lev Landau
) in Quantum Field Theory
in 1963. Between 1963 and 1965, together with Valery Pokrovsky
, Patashinski developed scaling theory of phase transitions. In 1965-1972 he applied this theory to a wide range of phase transition problems, including electric conductivity, brownian motion, nucleations in near-critical systems. In 1968 Patashinski defended his DSc (Habilitation
) dissertation on scaling theory of critical points. He subsequently worked on the theory of gravitational collapse
, the theory of turbulence
, high-energy hadron
-nucleus
collisions, nonequilibrium critical phenomena
, liquid
s, glass
es, polymer
s, and other subjects.
From 1968 to 1998 Patashinski was a Chief Scientific Fellow of the Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics
in Novosibirsk
, Russia
. From 1974 to 1992 he was also a Professor of Physics and Mathematics at the Novosibirsk State University
in Novosibirsk
, Russia
. In 1992, Patashinski moved to Northwestern University
in Evanston, IL, USA. In 1992, together with Kalle Levon and Alla Margolina, Patashinski proposed the concept of double percolation
for conductive polymer
s. He worked on NASA
-funded projects in nonequilibrium critical phenomena. Current research interests are statistical mechanics
and hydrodynamics of liquids, glasses, and polymeric systems, pattern recognition
theory and its applications. For many years, Patashinski has had an intense collaboration with, and support of, the Dow Chemical Company
.
Fellow in 2003. His awards include: Order of Labor Glory
(USSR, 1990), Scientific Achievement Diploma (USSR, 1986), Landau Prize (USSR Academy of Sciences, 1983).
Northwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....
in Evanston, Illinois
Evanston, Illinois
Evanston is a suburban municipality in Cook County, Illinois 12 miles north of downtown Chicago, bordering Chicago to the south, Skokie to the west, and Wilmette to the north, with an estimated population of 74,360 as of 2003. It is one of the North Shore communities that adjoin Lake Michigan...
. He is known for his contributions in many parts of the theoretical physics, including phase transition
Phase transition
A phase transition is the transformation of a thermodynamic system from one phase or state of matter to another.A phase of a thermodynamic system and the states of matter have uniform physical properties....
and critical phenomena, high energy physics, general relativity, amorphous materials. The announcement for the 1982 Nobel Prize in Physics
Nobel Prize in Physics
The Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded once a year by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895 and awarded since 1901; the others are the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel Peace Prize, and...
, which was awarded to Kenneth G. Wilson
Kenneth G. Wilson
Kenneth Geddes Wilson is an American theoretical physicist and Nobel Prize winner.As an undergraduate at Harvard, he was a Putnam Fellow. He earned his PhD from Caltech in 1961, studying under Murray Gell-Mann....
, acknowledges Patashinski, along with B. Widom, Michael Fisher
Michael Fisher
Michael Ellis Fisher is an English physicist, as well as chemist and mathematician, known for his many seminal contributions...
, Valery Pokrovsky
Valery Pokrovsky
Valery Pokrovsky is a Soviet and Russian physicist. He is a member ofthe Landau Institute in Chernogolovka nearMoscow in Russia and a professor for Theoretical Physics at Texas A&M University....
, and Leo Kadanoff
Leo Kadanoff
Leo Philip Kadanoff is an American physicist. He is a professor of physics at the University of Chicago and a former President of the American Physical Society . He has contributed to the fields of statistical physics, chaos theory, and theoretical condensed matter physics.-Biography:Kadanoff...
, for important contributions to the theory of critical phenomena and renormalization group. In 1983, Patashinski and Pokrovsky
Valery Pokrovsky
Valery Pokrovsky is a Soviet and Russian physicist. He is a member ofthe Landau Institute in Chernogolovka nearMoscow in Russia and a professor for Theoretical Physics at Texas A&M University....
received the Landau Prize of the Academy of Sciences of USSR for these contributions
Biography
Patashinski studied low temperature physics at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. He then pursued graduate studies in high energy physics at the Institute for Theoretical and Experimental PhysicsInstitute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics
The Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics is located in Moscow, Russia as a MinAtom physical institute....
and the Kapitza Institute in Moscow, and from 1961 at the Institute of Thermophysics in Novosibirsk
Novosibirsk
Novosibirsk is the third-largest city in Russia, after Moscow and Saint Petersburg, and the largest city of Siberia, with a population of 1,473,737 . It is the administrative center of Novosibirsk Oblast as well as of the Siberian Federal District...
Academgorodok. In 1962 and 1963, Patashinski, in collaboration with Valery Pokrovsky
Valery Pokrovsky
Valery Pokrovsky is a Soviet and Russian physicist. He is a member ofthe Landau Institute in Chernogolovka nearMoscow in Russia and a professor for Theoretical Physics at Texas A&M University....
and Isaak Khalatnikov, studied quasi-classical scattering in three dimensions using Regge theory
Regge theory
In quantum physics, Regge theory is the study of the analytic properties of scattering as a function of angular momentum, where the angular momentum is not restricted to be an integer but is allowed to take any complex value...
. He defended his PhD thesis (scientific advisor Lev Landau
Lev Landau
Lev Davidovich Landau was a prominent Soviet physicist who made fundamental contributions to many areas of theoretical physics...
) in Quantum Field Theory
Quantum field theory
Quantum field theory provides a theoretical framework for constructing quantum mechanical models of systems classically parametrized by an infinite number of dynamical degrees of freedom, that is, fields and many-body systems. It is the natural and quantitative language of particle physics and...
in 1963. Between 1963 and 1965, together with Valery Pokrovsky
Valery Pokrovsky
Valery Pokrovsky is a Soviet and Russian physicist. He is a member ofthe Landau Institute in Chernogolovka nearMoscow in Russia and a professor for Theoretical Physics at Texas A&M University....
, Patashinski developed scaling theory of phase transitions. In 1965-1972 he applied this theory to a wide range of phase transition problems, including electric conductivity, brownian motion, nucleations in near-critical systems. In 1968 Patashinski defended his DSc (Habilitation
Habilitation
Habilitation is the highest academic qualification a scholar can achieve by his or her own pursuit in several European and Asian countries. Earned after obtaining a research doctorate, such as a PhD, habilitation requires the candidate to write a professorial thesis based on independent...
) dissertation on scaling theory of critical points. He subsequently worked on the theory of gravitational collapse
Gravitational collapse
Gravitational collapse is the inward fall of a body due to the influence of its own gravity. In any stable body, this gravitational force is counterbalanced by the internal pressure of the body, in the opposite direction to the force of gravity...
, the theory of turbulence
Turbulence
In fluid dynamics, turbulence or turbulent flow is a flow regime characterized by chaotic and stochastic property changes. This includes low momentum diffusion, high momentum convection, and rapid variation of pressure and velocity in space and time...
, high-energy hadron
Hadron
In particle physics, a hadron is a composite particle made of quarks held together by the strong force...
-nucleus
Atomic nucleus
The nucleus is the very dense region consisting of protons and neutrons at the center of an atom. It was discovered in 1911, as a result of Ernest Rutherford's interpretation of the famous 1909 Rutherford experiment performed by Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden, under the direction of Rutherford. The...
collisions, nonequilibrium critical phenomena
Critical phenomena
In physics, critical phenomena is the collective name associated with thephysics of critical points. Most of them stem from the divergence of thecorrelation length, but also the dynamics slows down...
, liquid
Liquid
Liquid is one of the three classical states of matter . Like a gas, a liquid is able to flow and take the shape of a container. Some liquids resist compression, while others can be compressed. Unlike a gas, a liquid does not disperse to fill every space of a container, and maintains a fairly...
s, glass
Glass
Glass is an amorphous solid material. Glasses are typically brittle and optically transparent.The most familiar type of glass, used for centuries in windows and drinking vessels, is soda-lime glass, composed of about 75% silica plus Na2O, CaO, and several minor additives...
es, polymer
Polymer
A polymer is a large molecule composed of repeating structural units. These subunits are typically connected by covalent chemical bonds...
s, and other subjects.
From 1968 to 1998 Patashinski was a Chief Scientific Fellow of the Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics
Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics
The Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics is one of the major centres of advanced study of nuclear physics in Russia. It is located in the Siberian town Akademgorodok, on Academician Lavrentiev Avenue. The institute was founded by Gersh Itskovich Budker in 1959...
in Novosibirsk
Novosibirsk
Novosibirsk is the third-largest city in Russia, after Moscow and Saint Petersburg, and the largest city of Siberia, with a population of 1,473,737 . It is the administrative center of Novosibirsk Oblast as well as of the Siberian Federal District...
, Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
. From 1974 to 1992 he was also a Professor of Physics and Mathematics at the Novosibirsk State University
Novosibirsk State University
Novosibirsk State University was founded in May 1959 in the USSR by Soviet academicians Mikhail Alekseevich Lavrentiev, Sergei Lvovich Sobolev and Sergey Alekseyevich Khristianovich in a program of establishing a Siberian branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences...
in Novosibirsk
Novosibirsk
Novosibirsk is the third-largest city in Russia, after Moscow and Saint Petersburg, and the largest city of Siberia, with a population of 1,473,737 . It is the administrative center of Novosibirsk Oblast as well as of the Siberian Federal District...
, Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
. In 1992, Patashinski moved to Northwestern University
Northwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....
in Evanston, IL, USA. In 1992, together with Kalle Levon and Alla Margolina, Patashinski proposed the concept of double percolation
Percolation
In physics, chemistry and materials science, percolation concerns the movement and filtering of fluids through porous materials...
for conductive polymer
Conductive polymer
Conductive polymers or, more precisely, intrinsically conducting polymers are organic polymers that conduct electricity. Such compounds may have metallic conductivity or can be semiconductors. The biggest advantage of conductive polymers is their processability, mainly by dispersion. Conductive...
s. He worked on NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
-funded projects in nonequilibrium critical phenomena. Current research interests are statistical mechanics
Statistical mechanics
Statistical mechanics or statistical thermodynamicsThe terms statistical mechanics and statistical thermodynamics are used interchangeably...
and hydrodynamics of liquids, glasses, and polymeric systems, pattern recognition
Pattern recognition
In machine learning, pattern recognition is the assignment of some sort of output value to a given input value , according to some specific algorithm. An example of pattern recognition is classification, which attempts to assign each input value to one of a given set of classes...
theory and its applications. For many years, Patashinski has had an intense collaboration with, and support of, the Dow Chemical Company
Dow Chemical Company
The Dow Chemical Company is a multinational corporation headquartered in Midland, Michigan, United States. As of 2007, it is the second largest chemical manufacturer in the world by revenue and as of February 2009, the third-largest chemical company in the world by market capitalization .Dow...
.
Awards
Patashinski became American Physical SocietyAmerican Physical Society
The American Physical Society is the world's second largest organization of physicists, behind the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft. The Society publishes more than a dozen scientific journals, including the world renowned Physical Review and Physical Review Letters, and organizes more than 20...
Fellow in 2003. His awards include: Order of Labor Glory
Order of Labor Glory
The Order of Labour Glory was a Soviet civilian award created on 18 January 1974 by the decision of the Praesidium of Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Closely modeled on the Order of Glory, it was meant to be its civilian counterpart, awarded for exceptional labour achievements...
(USSR, 1990), Scientific Achievement Diploma (USSR, 1986), Landau Prize (USSR Academy of Sciences, 1983).
Works
- A.Z. Patashinskii, V.L. Pokrovskii, "Fluctuation Theory of Phase Transitions," Elsevier (1979).
- K. Levon, A. Margolina, A. Z. Patashinski, “Multiple percolation in conductive polymer blends”, Macromolecules 26, 4061 (1993).
- A. Z. Patashinski and M. A. Ratner “Structure changes in glassforming liquids upon cooling and compression”, J. Chem. Phys. 121 (10), 4711 (2004).
- A.Z. Patashinskii, V.L. Pokrovskii, and I.M. Khalatnikov, “Regge poles in quasiclassical potential well problems,” Sov. Phys. JETP 17, 1387-1397 (1963).