Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • News & Views
  • Published:

Leo Philip Kadanoff

Maestro who connected physics on multiple scales

Nature Physics volume 11, page 995 (2015)Cite this article

Subjects

Access through your institution
Buy or subscribe

“One might argue, as I do, that the connections among 'laws of nature' at different scales of energy, length or aggregation is the root subject of physics.” These words, penned by Leo P. Kadanoff in Nature as part of his obituary for Kenneth G. Wilson, are as apt a description of Kadanoff's scientific legacy as they are of Wilson's. Kadanoff, who passed away on 26 October 2015 after a short illness, often stated that his theory of scaling at phase transitions was his “best work”: without doubt, his name will forever be inextricably linked with the idea of block spins. Its inclusion in the title of Wilson's famous 1971 paper is a rare, almost unprecedented circumstance allowed by the editors of Physical Review B, who were evidently more aware of the scientific justification than the members of the committee that awarded the 1982 Nobel Prize in Physics solely to Wilson.

Kadanoff was born in 1937 and spent his early life in New York City. He received his PhD from Harvard in 1960 and was a postdoctoral researcher at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen until he moved to the University of Illinois in 1962. His work there concerned the development of many-body theory techniques, culminating in a short but highly influential monograph with Gordon Baym, which is still widely used today.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Access through your institution

Buy this article

  • Purchase on SpringerLink
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nigel Goldenfeld is in the Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1110 W. Green, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA,

    Nigel Goldenfeld

Authors
  1. Nigel Goldenfeld
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nigel Goldenfeld.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Goldenfeld, N. Maestro who connected physics on multiple scales. Nature Phys 11, 995 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys3590

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys3590

This article is cited by

  • Preface

    Journal of Statistical Physics (2017)

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing