Fa-Yueh Wu

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Fa-Yueh Wu (born January 5, 1932 in China , † January 21, 2020 in Newton , Massachusetts ) was a Chinese-American theoretical and mathematical physicist and mathematician who dealt with statistical mechanics and combinatorics .

Life

Wu received his bachelor's degree in physics from the Naval College of Engineering in Taiwan in 1954 and his master's degree from National Tsing-Hua University in 1959. Then he went to the United States, where he received his doctorate from Washington University in St. Louis in 1963 .

He was then from 1963 Assistant Professor at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and from 1967 at Northeastern University , where he was Associate Professor in 1969 and Professor in 1975. From 1989 he was there University Distinguished Professor and from 1992 he was there Matthews Distinguished Professor. Later he was Professor Emeritus there.

He has been a visiting professor and researcher at various universities and the Academia Sinica in Taiwan, at the State University of New York at Stony Brook (1968), in Berkeley , the Netherlands (Delft University in 1980, Amsterdam 1994), and at the Australian National University , in Brazil, in Beijing (Tsing Hua University 2005), the University of Paris VI and at IHES (1973), the Ecole Polytechnique in Lausanne and at the nuclear research center in Jülich .

Wu was known for his work on precisely solvable models of statistical mechanics (vertex models, Ising models, Potts models, dimer models, etc.). He also dealt with node invariants , with graph theory and combinatorics. In his mathematical work, for example, he also used models of statistical mechanics on node invariants or multidimensional decompositions in number theory. In the 1960s he also dealt with many-particle problems, for example with liquid helium.

In 1968, together with Elliott Lieb , he gave an exact solution to the ground state of the Hubbard model in one dimension - in two dimensions it now plays a role in models of the theory of high-temperature superconductors.

In 1973 he was a Fulbright-Hays Senior Research Fellow. In 1979 he received an honorary professorship from Peking University and in 1985 from Southwest Normal University in China. He was a fellow of the American Physical Society and the Chinese Physical Society in Taipei. In 1983/84 he was director of the Condensed Matter Theory research program of the National Science Foundation in the USA.

Fonts

  • Dear, Wu Two dimensional ferroelectric models . In: Domb, Green (Ed.): Phase transitions and critical phenomena . Volume 1. Academic Press, 1972, pp. 331-490 (Vertex models)
  • The Potts Model . In: Reviews of Modern Physics , Volume 54, 1982, pp. 235-268
  • Knot theory and statistical mechanics . In: Reviews of Modern Physics , Volume 64, 1992, pp. 1099-1131
  • Knot invariants and statistical mechanics- a physicists perspective . In: M. Ge, C.-N. Yang (Ed.): Braid group, knot theory and statistical mechanics . World Scientific, 1993
  • Exactly solvable models - a journey in statistical mechanics. Selected papers with commentaries . World Scientific, 2009 (with list of publications, commentary by Wu and article by Maillard. In: Chinese Journal of Physics , Volume 40, 2002, No. 4, on the work of Wu)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Prof. Fa Yueh "Fred" Wu 1932–2020. In: The Boston Globe. legacy.com, January 24, 2020, accessed January 24, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Lieb, Wu: Absence of Mott-transition of the short range one band model in one dimension . In: Physical Review Letters , Volume 20, 1968, p. 1445. For details, see Lieb, Wu: The one dimensional Hubbard model - a reminiscence . In: Physica A, Volume 321, 2003, pp. 1-27.
  3. ↑ Fa Yueh Wu. In: Fellows Directory. APS, accessed February 16, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Wu, Fa-Yueh
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wu, Fa Yueh
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Chinese theoretical physicist
DATE OF BIRTH January 5, 1932
PLACE OF BIRTH China
DATE OF DEATH January 21, 2020
Place of death Newton , Massachusetts