Cyril Domb
Cyril Domb (born December 9, 1920 in London , † February 15, 2012 in Jerusalem , Israel ) was an English theoretical physicist who dealt with the physics of phase transitions and statistical mechanics.
Domb's parents were Jews who emigrated to London from Galicia. He graduated in 1938 with a scholarship at Pembroke College of University of Cambridge , among others, he heard Paul Dirac . In 1941 he graduated and worked in military radar research, where he soon formed his own theory group with Fred Hoyle , Thomas Gold and Hermann Bondi . After the war he was back in Cambridge, this time on a research grant. After receiving his doctorate with Fred Hoyle in 1949, he was at Oxford University with Stanley Rushbrooke(1915-1995). 1952 to 1954 he was a lecturer in Cambridge. 1954 to 1981 he was Professor of Theoretical Physics at King's College London . From 1981 he was a professor at the Bar Ilan University in Israel, where he retired in 1989. Domb was also President of the Jerusalem College of Technology and President of the Society of Orthodox Jewish Scientists. He lived in Israel.
After the war in Cambridge, Domb began to be interested in statistical mechanics and independently developed the formalism of transfer matrices , but then discovered that Hendrik Anthony Kramers and Gregory Hugh Wannier (1911–1983) had anticipated him. Lars Onsager's work on the exact solution of the two-dimensional Ising model also became known at that time , and Domb began to apply the transfer matrix methods to other models of statistical mechanics for his dissertation in 1949 and developed approximations in the form of series solutions. From his series developments for the Ising model with and without a magnetic field, he also received indications of the absence of a singularity, strictly proven by Chen Ning Yang and Tsung-Dao Lee in 1952 and he found identical critical exponents in different models , an indication of universality (physics) in phase transitions, which was the focus of research from the 1960s onwards.
For many years Domb published the important book series "Phase transitions and critical phenomena" with Academic Press (the first 6 volumes 1971 to 1976 with Melville S. Green , volumes 6 to 16 from 1983 to 1994 with Joel Lebowitz ).
At the suggestion of the Lubavitch Rabbi , he published some works on the compatibility of the natural sciences with Orthodox Judaism, including a book with Aryeh Carmell ("Challenge Torah view on science and its problems").
In 1981 he received the Max Born Prize from the German Physical Society (DPG) and the English Institute of Physics .
His PhD students included Michael E. Fisher and Renfrey Potts (from the Potts model).
Fonts
- The Critical Point: A Historical Introduction to the Modern Theory of Critical Phenomena . Taylor and Francis, London 1996
Web links
- Interview 2002
- Chabad.org: biography
References
- ↑ The Royal Society regrets to announce the deaths of the following Fellows in 2012 , accessed April 8, 2012
- ↑ Domb "Order-disorder Statistics II. A two-dimensional mode", Proc. Roy. Soc. A, Vol. 199, 1949, pp. 199-221
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Domb, Cyril |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British physicist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 9, 1920 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | London |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 15, 2012 |
| Place of death | Jerusalem , Israel |