Alexander Patashinski


Alexander Zakharovich Patashinski is a Soviet and Russian physicist. He is a professor for Materials Research Scientist and professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. He received his master degree in Physical Engineering from the Moskow Institute of Physics and Technology, in 1960. In 1963, he defended his PhD thesis at the Novosibirsk Scientific Center. He was a scientist at the Siberian Branch of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, at the Institute of Thermal physics and the Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics. He also was employed as a professor at Novosibirsk State University. In 1992, he became a materials research scientist/professor at Northwestern University, Evanston IL. His areas of research are quantum mechanics, statistical physics, condensed matter theory, high energy physics, general relativity, turbulence theory, theory of liquids and glasses. He is best known for his pioneering and fundamental contributions to the modern theory of phase transitions in collaboration with Valery Pokrovsky, as well as the collective tube model in the theory of hadron-nuclei collisions at high energies, applications of the pattern recognition theory to local structure in liquids, liquid-liquid phase transitions.
Patashinski received several awards, including the Landau Prize of the Soviet Academy of Science in 1984. The announcement for the 1982 Nobel Prize in Physics, which was awarded to Kenneth G. Wilson, acknowledges Patashinski, Valery Pokrovsky, and Leo Kadanoff for important contributions to the theory of critical phenomena.

Biography

Patashinski studied low temperature physics at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. He then pursued graduate studies in high energy physics at the Kapitza Institute in Moscow and at the Institute of Thermophysics in Novosibirsk Academgorodok. He defended his PhD thesis in Quantum Field Theory in 1963. In 1962 and 1963, Patashinski, Valery Pokrovsky and Isaak Khalatnikov solved the problem of quasi-classical scattering in three dimensions. In 1963 - 1965, together with Valery Pokrovsky, Patashinski developed the fluctuating theory of phase transitions. This theory was then applied to a wide range of phase transition problems, including critical slowdown of chemical reactions, brownian motion, electric conductivity near the magnetic ordering point, nucleation in near-critical systems. Other contributions of Patashinski include the theory of gravitational collapse in non-spherically-symmetric systems, the collective tube model for hadron-nucleus collisions at high-energies, nonequilibrium critical phenomena. From 1970, Patashinski and his students B. Shumilo, A. Mitus, L.Son studied the local structure of liquids and glasses, and predicted liquid-liquid phase transitions with changes of this structure; this prediction was later confirmed by experiments. In 1992, together with Kalle Levon and Alla Margolina, Patashinski proposed the concept of double percolation for conductive polymers.
In Novosibirsk Academgorodok, Patashinski served as Senior Scientific Fellow of the Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics, and Professor of Physics and Mathematics at the Novosibirsk State University. From 1992, Patashinski is a Materials Research Scientist and a Professor at the Northwestern University, Evanston, IL. His work on nonequilibrium critical phenomena was supported by research grants from NASA. His studies of polymeric materials were supported by the Dow Chemical Company.
Highest awards of Patashinski include the Order of Labor Glory, Scientific Achievement Diploma, Landau Prize.

Works