Robert Zwanzig
Robert Zwanzig | |
---|---|
Born | 9 April 1928 Brooklyn, New York |
Died | May 15, 2014 Bethesda, Maryland |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | Caltech |
Thesis | Quantum Hydrodynamics: a statistical mechanical theory of light scattering from simple non-polar fluids |
Doctoral advisor | John G. Kirkwood |
Academic work | |
Institutions | University of Maryland |
Robert Walter Zwanzig (born Brooklyn, New York, 9 April 1928[1] – died Bethesda, Maryland, May 15, 2014[2]) was an American theoretical physicist and chemist who made important contributions to the statistical mechanics of irreversible processes, protein folding, and the theory of liquids and gases.
Background
Zwanzig received his bachelor's degree from
Caltech. From 1988 onwards he was a researcher at the National Institutes of Health (National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases) in Bethesda, Maryland
, where he was a Fogarty Scholar (1987–88) and later worked as a research scientist emeritus.
One of his early works from 1954 is often cited as the first use of
Leon van Hove. The projection operator formalism later found wide application and is now known as the Zwanzig-Mori formalism (also named after Hazime Mori, who published similar results in 1965[4]
).
An important result of the Zwanzig-Mori formalism, the
Nakajima-Zwanzig equation
, bears his name and reflects the important contributions of Sadao Nakajima made around the same time.
Together with Tsu-Wei Nee he derived a theory for the dielectric function and
Awards and honors
He received many awards, including
- the Peter Debye Award (1976),
- the Irving Langmuir Award (1985),
- the Joel H. Hildebrand Award (1994).
He was a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Chemical Society.
Selected bibliography
- Nonequilibrium Statistical Mechanics, Oxford University Press 2001