Robert Griffiths

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Robert B. Griffiths (born February 25, 1937 in Etah , Uttar Pradesh ) is an American physicist who teaches at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania .

life and work

Griffiths studied at Princeton University (Bachelor in 1957) and Stanford University (Masters in 1958), where he received his PhD in 1962. From 1964 he was first assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University, where he became a professor in 1969. From 1979 to 2014 he was Otto Stern University Professor of Physics there. In 1969 he was visiting professor at SUNY . He has been retired since 2015.

Griffiths is known for his work on mathematical statistical mechanics in the 1960s and 1970s, e.g. B. via the Ising model (Griffiths inequalities for correlations in this model) or also to the Blume-Emery-Griffiths (BEG) model , which in particular describes a prototypical tricritical point .

From 1984 he developed the " Consistent Histories " (see also decoherence ) - interpretation of quantum mechanics - with Roland Omnès , Murray Gell-Mann , James Hartle and others . It is based on the Copenhagen interpretation of Niels Bohr , can be measured simultaneously after never more properties of a particle. They must therefore be measured one after the other and merged into a "consistent history".

In 1984 he received the Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics . In 1987 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences . In 1966 he became a Sloan Research Fellow .

literature

  • Consistent Quantum Theory , Cambridge University Press, 2001
  • Phase Transitions , in Cecile DeWitt, Raymond Stora Statistical Mechanics and Quantum Field Theory , 1970

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Recognition: National Academies. Department of Physics, CMU, accessed November 6, 2018 .
  2. ^ RB Griffiths Correlations in Ising Ferromagnets. I , J. Math. Phys., Vol. 8, 1967, pp. 478-483
  3. ^ RB Griffiths Rigorous Results for Ising Ferromagnets of Arbitrary Spin , J. Math. Phys., Vol. 10, 1969, p. 1559
  4. ↑ M.Blume, VJEmery and RB Griffiths, Phys. Rev. A, Volume 4, 1971, pp. 1071 ff
personal data
SURNAME Griffiths, Robert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Griffiths, Robert B.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American physicist
DATE OF BIRTH February 25, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH Etah, Uttar Pradesh