50 Years of the Renormalization Group: Dedicated to the Memory of Michael E. Fischer

The contributions in the book are devoted to the memory of Michael E Fisher, and hence include many personal memories from people whose work was influenced by him. Also, the book is a collection of articles from leaders in the field of phase transitions and critical phenomena, to celebrate 50 years of the renormalization group and the 1972 paper by Wilson and Fisher. Many of the articles review, in tutorial form, the progress in the fields of phase transitions and the renormalization group.

Professor Amon Aharony, born in Jerusalem, 1943. BSc in physics and mathematics (1963) and MSc in nuclear physics (1964) from the Hebrew University and PhD in high energy physics (1971) from Tel Aviv University. Post-doc at Cornell (1972–4), Harvard, UCSD and Bell Labs (1974–5), working on phase transitions and critical phenomena. Professor of physics at Tel Aviv University (1975–2006), and at Ben Gurion University (2006–2013). Adjunct professor in physics at the University of Oslo (1987–2013). Visiting professor at Harvard, MIT, Boston University, University of British Columbia, University of Tokyo and more, and a long term consultant at IBM research (Yorktown Heights and Zurich), at MIT and at the Weizmann Institute. Visiting scientist at UCLA, BNL, NIST, ANL and NTT. Currently Professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University and Research Professor emeritus at Ben Gurion University.

Aharony's scientific work includes 460 papers and several books on critical phenomena, disordered systems, percolation, magnetism, mesoscopic physics and spintronics. At the moment, these publications have about 50000 citations, with h-index=86 (from Google scholar). With Ora Entin-Wohlman, he authored Introduction to Solid State Physics (World Scientific, 2018).

Aharony received the Fulbright Fellowship, the Israeli Landau, Weizmann, and Rothschild prizes, the German Meitner-Humboldt Award, the Norwegian Randers Research Prize and more. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the British Institute of Physics, and a member of the Norwegian Royal Academies of Science in Oslo and in Trondheim, the European Academy of Arts, Sciences and Humanities (Paris), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Israel Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Professor Ora Entin-Wohlman, born in Rehovot, married to Dan Entin and is the mother of a triplet of sons. BSc in Physics and Mathematics (1965) and MSc in Physics (1967) from the Technion, and a PhD in Physics (1973) from Bar Ilan University. Joined Tel Aviv University in 1973, became full professor, and then professor emerita in 2006, when she joined Ben Gurion University, becoming Professor emerita there in 2013. She was a visiting Professor at many universities and research laboratories, including the Universities of California at Los Angeles, Paris and Tokyo, the Institutes of Advanced Studies in Jerusalem, Oslo and Beijing, the US national Labs in Maryland and Argonne, the NTT labs in Japan, the Institute for Basic Science in Daejeon (Korea), and more.

Entin-Wohlman published about 300 papers on the theory of condensed matter physics, with important contributions to superconductivity, localization of electrons and of vibrational modes, magnetism, mesoscopic physics (nanotechnology) and spintronics (with implications to quantum computing). With Amnon Aharony, she authored Introduction to Solid State Physics (World Scientific, 2018).

Among others, she is a fellow of the American Physical Society and a distinguished fellow of the British Institute of Physics, a member of the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters, the European Academy (Paris), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. She Received the Humboldt prize (Germany) and the Landau Prize (Israel), has been an editor of important physics journals and a member of important international committees. Her students are professors in universities in Israel and all over the world.

Professor David A Huse, Born in 1958. BSc in physics (1979) from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and PhD in physics (1983) from Cornell University with Michael E Fisher as adviser. Research scientist at Bell Labs (1983–1996), then professor of physics at Princeton University (1996–). Also, visiting associate at Institute for Advanced Study (2010–).

Huse's scientific work includes 260 papers about phase transitions, critical phenomena, disordered systems, magnetism, superconductivity, biophysics, quantum many-body dynamics, etc. At the moment, these publications have about 50000 citations, with h-index=115 (from Google scholar).

Huse received the Lars Onsager Prize of the American Physical Society (2022). He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and is a member of the National Academy of Science (USA).

Professor Leo Radzihovsky, born in Leningrad, Soviet Union, 1966. BS and MS in Physics (1988) from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and PhD (1993) from Harvard University. Postdoc at University of Chicago (1993–5). Professor of Physics at University of Colorado at Boulder (1995–). Visiting Professor at Harvard, MIT, Weizmann Institute, KITP, Ecole Normale Superieure, and Berkeley.

Radzihovsky's scientific work includes 150 papers and many invited talks around the world. His research spans a broad range of topics in classical and quantum physics of condensed matter, including liquid crystals, superconductors, magnets, topological states of matter, atomic and nonequilibrium systems. The unifying theme is the role of fluctuations, heterogeneities and correlations in states of matter beyond mean-field description. These publications have 8000 citations, with h-index=47 (from Google Scholar).

Radzihovsky is a recipient of the Packard and Sloan fellowships, the NSF CAREER Award and is a Simons Investigator. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society.