Rudolf Podgornik (born August 27, 1955 in Ljubljana) is a Slovenian physicist. His field of research is the physics of soft matter, the physics of coulomb fluids and macromolecular interactions, the Lifshitz theory of dispersion interaction, the physics of membranes, polymers and polyelectrolytes and especially the physics of DNA as well as the physics of viruses. He discovered the line hexatic phase in the phase diagram of the concentrated DNA solutions. The line hexatic mesophase appears to be the preferred packing form of DNA in bacteriophages. He is the author of more than a hundred scientific papers and a coeditor of a book on "Electrostatic Effects in Soft Matter" (Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute, Les Houches, France, 1–13 October 2000, Series: NATO Science Series II: Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry, Vol. 46 ), together with Christian Holm and Patrick Kekicheff. Together with D. Harries, J. DeRouchey, H. H. Strey, and V. A. Parsegian, he coauthored the chapter "Interactions in Macromolecular Complexes Used as Nonviral Vectors for Gene Delivery", in the leading textbook of gene therapy: "Gene Therapy: Therapeutic Mechanisms and Strategies", N. Smyth – Templeton, Marcel Dekker, New York (2008), Third Edition.
Rudolf Podgornik is the head of the research program Biophysics of polymers, membranes, gels, colloids and cells, financially supported by the Slovene Agency for Research and Development. He is a member of the Theoretical Physics Department at the Jozef Stefan Institute in Ljubljana, an adjunct scientist at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD and teaches at the Physics Department, Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, University of Ljubljana and at the Medical Faculty, University of Ljubljana. He is a coeditor-in-chief of the Journal of Biological Physics, edited by Springer.
In 1999 he was awarded the highest prize for scientific excellence in Slovenia, the Zois Award. In 2008 he was a co-recipient of the Martin Hirschorn IAC Prize. This award, made possible by the generosity of Martin Hirschorn, is given once every two years and is funded by the INCE Foundation.