Pieter Kasteleyn
Encyclopedia
Pieter Willem Kasteleyn was a Dutch
physicist
famous for his contributions to the field of Statistical Mechanics
.
In 1963 Kasteleyn was nominated Full Professor at the Lorentz Institute of Theoretical Physics in Leiden.
In 1979 he was elected a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. From 1981 to 1985 he acted as secretary of the Physics Section of the Academy. From 1978 to 1984 he was chairman of the Commission for Theoretical Physics of the Dutch National Physics Foundation. He retired in 1985.
He died on January 16, 1996, after an unexpected and short illness.
(essentially a domino tiling
), he independently discovered combinatorial Fisher-Kasteleyn-Temperley algorithm
.
In a series of papers with C. M. Fortuin he developed random cluster model and obtained the FKG inequality
.
Dutch people
The Dutch people are an ethnic group native to the Netherlands. They share a common culture and speak the Dutch language. Dutch people and their descendants are found in migrant communities worldwide, notably in Suriname, Chile, Brazil, Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, and the United...
physicist
Physicist
A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...
famous for his contributions to the field of Statistical Mechanics
Statistical mechanics
Statistical mechanics or statistical thermodynamicsThe terms statistical mechanics and statistical thermodynamics are used interchangeably...
.
Biography
Pieter Willem Kasteleyn was born in Leiden on October 12, 1924. After finishing high school in 1942, Kasteleyn briefly studied chemistry in Amsterdam. After the war Leiden University reopened and he undertook the study of physics which he graduated in 1951. He defended his Ph.D. thesis working under S.R. de Groot in 1956.In 1963 Kasteleyn was nominated Full Professor at the Lorentz Institute of Theoretical Physics in Leiden.
In 1979 he was elected a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. From 1981 to 1985 he acted as secretary of the Physics Section of the Academy. From 1978 to 1984 he was chairman of the Commission for Theoretical Physics of the Dutch National Physics Foundation. He retired in 1985.
He died on January 16, 1996, after an unexpected and short illness.
Research
While investigating dimers on a square latticeSquare lattice
In mathematics, the square lattice is a type of lattice in a two-dimensional Euclidean space. It is the two-dimensional version of the integer lattice. It is one of the five types of two-dimensional lattices as classified by their symmetry groups; its symmetry group is known symbolically as p4m.Two...
(essentially a domino tiling
Domino tiling
A domino tiling of a region in the Euclidean plane is a tessellation of the region by dominos, shapes formed by the union of two unit squares meeting edge-to-edge...
), he independently discovered combinatorial Fisher-Kasteleyn-Temperley algorithm
FKT algorithm
The FKT algorithm, named after Fisher, Kasteleyn, and Temperley, counts the number of perfect matchings in a planar graph in polynomial time. This same task is #P-complete for general graphs. Counting the number of matchings, even for planar graphs, is also #P-complete...
.
In a series of papers with C. M. Fortuin he developed random cluster model and obtained the FKG inequality
FKG inequality
The FKG inequality is a correlation inequality, a fundamental tool in statistical mechanics and probabilistic combinatorics , due to...
.