Sam Edwards (physicist)

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Sir Samuel Frederick Edwards (b. February 1, 1928) is a British physicist.

Sam Edwards was educated at Swansea Grammar School, Wales; Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge, England; and Harvard University, United States. He did his thesis under Julian Schwinger on the structure of the electron, and subsequently developed the functional integral form of field theory. Professor Edwards' work in condensed matter physics started in 1958 with a paper which showed that statistical properties of disordered systems (glasses, gels etc) could be described by the Feynman diagram and path integral methods invented in quantum field theory. This paper has started a new way of looking at complex matter which is now all pervading. During the following 35 years Professor Edwards has worked in the theoretical study of complex materials such as polymers, gels, colloids and similar systems.

He was Chairman of the Science Research Council 1973-1977 and between 1984-1995 Edwards was Cavendish Professor of Physics. He is a member of the Board of Sponsors of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists [1] and Past President of Cambridge Society for the Application of Research. Awards presented to him include the Davy Medal (1984) and the Royal Medal (2001) of the Royal Society, the Boltzmann medal of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (1995), and the Dirac Medal of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (2005).

[edit] References

Paul M. Goldbart and Nigel Goldenfeld, David Sherrington (eds.) (2004). "Stealing the gold: a celebration of the pioneering physics of Sam Edwards". Oxford: OUP. ISBN 0198528531.
Edwards, S.F. (1958). "A new method for the evaluation of electric conductivity in metals". Philosophical Magazine 3: 1020–1031. (together with contents pages for the above book).