| 1 | Name: | Dr. Michael E. Fisher | |
| Institution: | University of Maryland; Cornell University | ||
| Year Elected: | 1993 | ||
| Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | ||
| Subdivision: | 106. Physics | ||
| Residency: | Resident | ||
| Living? : | Deceased | ||
| Birth Date: | 1931 | ||
| Death Date: | November 26, 2021 | ||
Michael E. Fisher has been called the unquestioned father of the modern theory of the behavior of matter at thermodynamic phase transitions and critical points. Beginning with early work on understanding the non-analytic mean description of matter near a critical point (the existence of generalized power-law changes of physical properties in the neighborhood of a critical point), he went on to participate in the great 1965-72 period during which this deep, long-standing problem was effectively solved. Persisting in broadening and deepening the breatkthrough mode in this period, Dr. Fisher's group exploited the renormalization group scheme, which came to penetrate science in fields as far apart as polymers and cosmology. Since 1987 Dr. Fisher has been a professor at the University of Maryland's Institute for Physical Science and Technology. Born in Trinidad in 1931, he holds a Ph.D. from the University of London, and he has also taught at the Royal Air Force Technical College, King's College, the University of London and, from 1966 to 1987, at Cornell University. Winner of the American Physical Society's Irving Langmuir Prize (1971), the Wolf Prize (1980) and the Boltzmann Medal (1983) among other honors, Dr. Fisher is a fellow of the Royal Society and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and a foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences. He is an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Indian Academy of Sciences and a foreign member of the Brasilian Academy of Sciences and of the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters. | |||