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Physicist Nagel Receives Buckley
1998
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An effort to bring previously overlooked phenomena into mainstream
physics has earned Chicago physicist Sidney Nagel the Oliver Buckley
Prize of the American Physical Society. In addition to the $5,000
prize, Nagel received a certificate citing him "for his innovative
studies of disordered systems ranging from structural glasses
to granular materials." A perfect crystal of a chemical element
or a compound is composed of an ordered arrangement of atoms,
but in a disordered system-a glass, for example-the atoms are
in disarray. Disordered systems also exist on a larger scale,
as with the sand grains in a sand pile. "When we talk about
disordered systems, we are really thinking about systems in which
the presence of disorder plays a crucial role in determining its
behavior," said Nagel, the Louis Block Professor in Physical
Sciences. "What we are after is to see if, despite the lack
of an ordered structure, there are general laws that govern the
system's behavior. " According to Nagel, the Buckley Prize
came about largely because of the collaborative nature of Chicago's
James Franck Institute. "This has been a group effort with
students, postdocs and colleagues," Nagel said.
In collaboration with Heinrich Jaeger, Associate Professor in
Physics, Nagel has studied the behavior of granular materials.
He has studied the physics of coffee stains with Tom Witten, Professor
in Physics, and Todd Dupont, Professor in Computer Science and
Mathematics. With Thomas Rosenbaum and Susan Coppersmith, both
Professors in Physics, Nagel has Investigated unusual magnetic
phenomena called spinglasses. Discussions with Gene Mazenko, also
a Professor in Physics, aided Nagel's work on the characteristics
of ordinary glasses. Nagel's studies of the properties of liquid
drops as they snap off into separate drops likewise was influenced
by the research of and conversations with Leo Kadanoff, the John
MacArthur Distinguished Service Professor in Physics and Mathematics.
Nagel said he was attracted to research in disordered systems,
especially in glasses, because they presented deep, scientific
problems "All crystals-ordered arrangements of atoms-are
the same. All disordered systems are different in their own special
ways, to paraphrase Tolstoy," Nagel said "Can you say
something universal about these glassy systems that is of general
interest, that goes beyond these particular materials that you
have in your hand? Over the years, if you look at them closely
enough, you begin to see that there are universal behaviors."
Also motivating Nagel was the desire to draw attention to various
phenomena that scientists have regarded as unimportant to physics.
"Sand piles were not considered part of physics," Nagel
said. "We wanted to show that there were wonderful scientific
questions in sand piles or granular materials. They look so simple,
but they involve some very deep questions. "The question
of a coffee-drop stain at one level looks totally trivial. At
another level, there's real physics that we can dig into and see
its consequences," he said.
Nagel's work was inspired by Tom Witten's research on aggregation
phenomena by the appearance of soot particles. "You can actually
pose wonderful scientific questions around a particle of soot,"
Nagel said. "When I saw that, I was very taken by it. I wanted
to be able to, as much as possible, do that same kind of thing
over and over again." The Buckley Prize was established in
1953 to recognize and encourage outstanding contributions to condensed
matter physics, which is the study of fluids and solids. Previous
recipients of the prize include Chicago's Leo Kadanoff (1977);
Dean Eastman, Director of the Argonne National Laboratory and
Professor in Physics (1980); and Daniel Tsui, a Chicago physics
alumnus who shared the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physics (1984).
Endowed by AT&T Bell Laboratories, the Buckley Prize was
named for Oliver Buckley, president of Bell Labs from 1940 to
1951. $7.2 million grant will help take scientists off road map.
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