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:

Statistical physics

90 years of the Ising model

Nature Physics volume 11, page 997 (2015)Cite this article

Subjects

Ernst Ising's analysis of the one-dimensional variant of his eponymous model (Z. Phys 31, 253–258; 1925) is an unusual paper in the history of early twentieth-century physics. Its central result — demonstrating that a linear chain of two-state spins cannot undergo a phase transition at finite temperature — is correct, if somewhat trivial compared with other physics breakthroughs published in the 1920s. But it is Ising's fateful extension of his conclusions to two and three dimensions that proved spectacularly wrong and, paradoxically, earned him an enduring association with the model that now bears his name.

Famously, the two-dimensional version for the model was solved analytically by Lars Onsager in the early 1940s (Phys. Rev. 65, 117; 1944), a result that is rightly considered a towering achievement among many significant contributions made over the years by the likes of Peierls, Bethe, Yang, Kadanoff (see page 995) Fisher and Wilson, just to name a handful. But the three-dimensional lattice has never been solved exactly, in spite of a multitude of attempts and false dawns — including a claim by John Maddox (who would later become the editor of Nature) made at a conference in Paris in 1952.

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

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on SpringerLink
  • Instant access to the full article PDF.

USD 39.95

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

Authors
  1. Andrea Taroni
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Taroni, A. 90 years of the Ising model. Nature Phys 11, 997 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys3595

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys3595

This article is cited by

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