This invaluable book explores the delicate interplay between geometry and statistical mechanics in materials such as microemulsions, wetting and growth interfaces, bulk lyotropic liquid crystals, chalcogenide glasses and sheet polymers, using tools from the fields of polymer physics, differential geometry, field theory and critical phenomena. Several chapters have been updated relative to the classic 1989 edition. Moreover, there are now three entirely new chapters - on effects of anisotropy and heterogeneity, on fixed connectivity membranes and on triangulated surface models of fluctuating membranes.
Steven Weinberg is Josey Regental Professor of Science at the University of Texas. His research has been honored with numerous prizes and awards, including in 1979 the Nobel Prize in Physics and in 1991 the National Medal of Science, as well as the Heinemann Prize in Mathematical Physics and the Madison Medal of Princeton University. He has been elected to the US National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society of Great Britain, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.