Shang-keng Ma
馬上庚
Born(1940-09-24)September 24, 1940
Chongqing,[1] Sichuan, China
DiedNovember 24, 1983(1983-11-24) (aged 43)
La Jolla, California
Alma materUniversity of California, Berkeley
Scientific career
FieldsPhysics
ThesisCorrelations of Photons from a Thermal Source (1966)
Doctoral advisorKenneth M. Watson

Shang-keng Ma (September 24, 1940 – November 24, 1983) was a Chinese theoretical physicist, known for his work on the theory of critical phenomena and random systems.[2] He is known as the co-author with Bertrand Halperin and Pierre Hohenberg of a 1972 paper that "generalized the renormalization group theory to dynamical critical phenomena."[2] Ma is also known as the co-author with Yoseph Imry of a 1975 paper[2] and with Amnon Aharony and Imry of a 1976 paper that established the foundation of the random field Ising model (RFIM)[3]

Biography

He transferred in 1959 from the National Taiwan University to the University of California, Berkeley. There he graduated in 1962 with a bachelor's degree in science and in 1966 with a Ph.D. His Ph.D. thesis Correlations of Photons from a Thermal Source was supervised by Kenneth M. Watson. As a postdoc in 1966, Ma went to the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) to study with Keith Brueckner. Ma's outstanding ability earned him a faculty appointment at UCSD in less than a year.[2] He was at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) from September 1968 to June 1969 and in the autumn of 1970.[4] There he worked with Shau-Jin Chang on the infinite-energy limit of Feynman diagrams[2][5] and with Roger Dashen on the S-matrix formulation of statistical mechanics.[2][6] In 1971 he became a tenured faculty member of the UCSD physics department[7] and became a Sloan Research Fellow.[8]

He visited Cornell University in 1972 where he became involved in development of the renormalization theory of critical phenomena. Gradually, his interest shifted to statistical physics.[9]

In 1975, with Yoseph Imry, he published the seminal paper on the effect of a random magnetic field on ferro-magnetic order. Their model has come to be known as the random field Ising model.[2]

In 1976 Ma was a visiting scientist at Paris-Saclay University and published his paper Renormalization group by Monte Carlo methods, which introduced a technique which "has evolved into a powerful technology that is widely used today for the numerical study of critical phenomena."[2]

In 1981, Ma formulated the "coincidence counting" method for the calculation of entropy from the phase space trajectory. He felt strongly that such a dynamical formulation of entropy was crucial for understanding random and other systems exhibiting metastability.[2]

In the two academic years 1977–1978 and 1981–1982 he taught in Taiwan at Tsinghua University, where he wrote in Chinese an advanced text on statistical mechanics — the book, published in 1983, "eschews the traditional approach built on the Gibbs ensemble." World Scientific published an English translation in 1985. In 1986 World Scientific also published a memorial volume in honor of Ma.[10]

Upon his death he was survived by his widow and two children.[7]

Articles

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Books

References

  1. ^ "Shang-keng Ma Papers". Online Archive California (OAC).
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Chen, Joseph C. Y.; Prentis, Jeffrey; Schultz, Sheldon (1984). "Shang-keng Ma". Physics Today. 37 (4): 102–103. Bibcode:1984PhT....37d.102C. doi:10.1063/1.2916178.
  3. ^ Fytas, N.G.; Martín-Mayor, V.; Picco, M.; Sourlas, N. (2018). "Review of recent developments in the random-field Ising model". Journal of Statistical Physics. 172 (2): 665–672. arXiv:1711.09597. Bibcode:2018JSP...172..665F. doi:10.1007/s10955-018-1955-7. S2CID 115133326. arXiv preprint
  4. ^ "Shang-Keng Ma". Institute for Advanced Study (ias.edu). 9 December 2019.
  5. ^ "Shau-Jin Chang". Institute for Advanced Study (ias.edu). 9 December 2019.
  6. ^ "Roger Dashen". Institute for Advanced Study (ias.edu). 9 December 2019.
  7. ^ a b Chen, Joseph C. Y.; Schultz, Sheldon; Sham, Lu Jeu. "Shang-Keng Ma, Physics: San Diego, 1940–1983, Professor". Online Archive of California.
  8. ^ "Sloan Research Fellows in Physics or Chemistry, 1971". Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (sloan.org).
  9. ^ Wu, Fa Yueh (2009). "Eulogy on Shang-Keng Ma". Exactly Solved Models: A Journey in Statistical Mechanics : Selected Papers with Commentaries (1963-2008). World Scientific. pp. 68–69. ISBN 9789812813886.
  10. ^ Grinstein, Geoffrey; Mazenko, Gene F., eds. (August 1986). Directions in Condensed Matter Physics: Memorial Volume in Honor of Shang-keng Ma. World Scientific. ISBN 9789814513609. Publications of Shang-Keng Ma: p. 249 p. 250 p. 251 p. 252
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