Barry Simon
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Barry Simon (born 16 April 1946) is an eminent American mathematical physicist and the IBM Professor of Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Caltech, known for his prolific contributions in spectral theory, functional analysis, and nonrelativistic quantum mechanics (particularly Schrödinger operators), including the connections to atomic and molecular physics. He has authored more than 300 publications on mathematics and physics.
More particularly, his work has focused on broad areas of mathematical physics and analysis covering: quantum field theory, statistical mechanics, Brownian motion, random matrix theory, general nonrelativistic quantum mechanics (including N-body systems and resonances), nonrelativistic quantum mechanics in electric and magnetic fields, the semi-classical limit, the singular continuous spectrum, random and ergodic Schrödinger operators, orthogonal polynomials, and non-selfadjoint spectral theory.
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[edit] Early career
A brilliant student, Simon became a Putnam Fellow in 1965 at 19 years old. He received his A.B. in 1966 from Harvard College and his Ph.D. in Physics at Princeton University in 1970.
Following his doctoral studies, Dr. Simon took professorship at Princeton for many years, often working with colleague Elliott H. Lieb on the Thomas-Fermi Theory and Hartree-Fock Theory of atoms in addition to phase transitions and mentoring many of the same students as Lieb. He eventually was persuaded to take a post at Caltech, which he still holds.
[edit] Anecdotes
His status is legendary in mathematical physics and he is renowned for his ability to write scientific manuscripts "in five percent of the time ordinary mortals need to write such papers."
A colleague of his, in a tale revealing of his brilliance, once stated: Barry has always been remarkable for his vast knowledge of mathematics, so it was many years before I can recall ever telling him a published theorem he didn't already know. One day I saw Barry in Princeton shortly after a meeting and told him about an old inequality for PDEs, which, as I could tell from his intent look, was new to him. I said, "It seems to be useful. Do you want to see the proof?" His response "No, that's OK." Then he went to the board and wrote down a flawless proof on the spot.
There is a similar account of how the mathematical physics seminars at Princeton were conducted while Dr. Simon was in residence. There was an outside speaker most of the time. Wigner would usually show up and ask his typical "Wignerian" questions. Barry would sit in the audience and write a paper. From time to time he would look up from his notes and ask a question that would unsettle most speakers: Someone in the audience seemed to know more about what he was talking about than himself. Sometimes, at the end of the talk, Barry would go to the board and give his version of the proof, which was always slick.
[edit] Family
Barry is married to Martha (née Katzin) who obtained her PhD in Mathematics from Princeton Graduate School. They married in January of 1971, shortly after Barry became an Assistant Professor at Princeton. Martha has taught in a variety of schools in the New York/New Jersey area and California and is currently a Lecturer in Mathematics at CalState Northridge. Barry and Martha have five children (Rivka, Benjamin Pesach, Zvi, Aryeh, and Chana) and, so far, seven grandchildren.
[edit] Quotes
- "To first approximation, the human brain is a harmonic oscillator." Professor Simon made this remark in private conversation to Charles Fefferman while walking around the Princeton campus.
- "If you don't know to add fractions, you don't know how to think." This was stated by Professor Simon while lecturing to a freshman mathematics class at the California Institute of Technology.
- Regarding a new barbecue grill: "It's almost big enough to barbecue a graduate student!"
[edit] Selected publications
- Resonances in n-body quantum systems with dilatation analytic potentials and the foundations of time-dependent perturbation theory, Annals of Math. 97 (1973), 247-274
- (with M. Reed) Methods of Modern Mathematical Physics, Vol. I: Functional Analysis, Academic Press, 1972; Vol. II: Fourier Analysis, Self-Adjointness, Academic Press, 1975; Vol. III: Scattering Theory, Academic Press, 1978; Vol. IV: Analysis of Operators, Academic Press, 1977
- (with F. Guerra and L. Rosen) The P(φ)2 quantum theory as classical statistical mechanics, Annals of Math. 101 (1975), 111-259
- (with E. Lieb) The Thomas-Fermi theory of atoms, molecules and solids, Advances in Math. 23 (1977), 22-116
- (with J. Fröhlich and T. Spencer) Infrared bounds, phase transitions and continuous symmetry breaking, Commun. Math. Phys. 50 (1976), 79-85
- (with P. Perry and I. Sigal) Spectral analysis of multiparticle Schrödinger operators, Annals of Math. 114 (1981), 519-567
- (with M. Aizenman) Brownian motion and Harnack's inequality for Schrödinger operators, Commun. Pure Appl. Math. 35 (1982), 209-273
- Semiclassical analysis of low lying eigenvalues, II. Tunneling, Annals of Math. 120 (1984), 89-118
- Holonomy, the quantum adiabatic theorem and Berry's phase, Phys. Rev. Lett. 51 (1983), 2167-2170
- (with T. Wolff) Singular continuous spectrum under rank one perturbations and localization for random Hamiltonians, Commun. Pure Appl. Math. 39 (1986), 75-90
- Operators with singular continuous spectrum: I. General operators, Annals of Math. 141 (1995), 131-145
