Alexander Patashinski

Alexander Zakharovich Patashinski (Russian: Александр Захарович Паташинский, other spellings of his name are Patashinskii, Patashinsky, Potashinsky) is a Research Professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. He is known for his contributions in many parts of the theoretical physics, including phase transition and critical phenomena, high energy physics, general relativity, amorphous materials. The announcement for the 1982 Nobel Prize in Physics, which was awarded to Kenneth G. Wilson, acknowledges Patashinski, along with B. Widom, Michael Fisher, Valery Pokrovsky, and Leo Kadanoff, for important contributions to the theory of critical phenomena and renormalization group. In 1983, Patashinski and Pokrovsky received the Landau Prize of the Academy of Sciences of USSR for these contributions

Patashinski studied low temperature physics at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. He then pursued graduate studies in high energy physics at the Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics and the Kapitza Institute in Moscow, and from 1961 at the Institute of Thermophysics in Novosibirsk Academgorodok. In 1962 and 1963, Patashinski, in collaboration with Valery Pokrovsky and Isaak Khalatnikov, studied quasi-classical scattering in three dimensions using Regge theory. He defended his PhD thesis (scientific advisor Lev Landau) in Quantum Field Theory in 1963. Between 1963 and 1965, together with Valery Pokrovsky, Patashinski developed scaling theory of phase transitions. In 1965-1972 he applied this theory to a wide range of phase transition problems, including electric conductivity, brownian motion, nucleations in near-critical systems. In 1968 Patashinski defended his DSc (Habilitation) dissertation on scaling theory of critical points. He subsequently worked on the theory of gravitational collapse, the theory of turbulence, high-energy hadron-nucleus collisions, nonequilibrium critical phenomena, liquids, glasses, polymers, and other subjects.

From 1968 to 1998 Patashinski was a Chief Scientific Fellow of the Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics in Novosibirsk, Russia. From 1974 to 1992 he was also a Professor of Physics and Mathematics at the Novosibirsk State University in Novosibirsk, Russia. In 1992, Patashinski moved to Northwestern University in Evanston, IL, USA. In 1992, together with Kalle Levon and Alla Margolina, Patashinski proposed the concept of double percolation for conductive polymers. He worked on NASA-funded projects in nonequilibrium critical phenomena. Current research interests are statistical mechanics and hydrodynamics of liquids, glasses, and polymeric systems, pattern recognition theory and its applications. For many years, Patashinski has had an intense collaboration with, and support of, the Dow Chemical Company.

Patashinski became American Physical Society Fellow in 2003. His awards include: Order of Labor Glory (USSR, 1990), Scientific Achievement Diploma (USSR, 1986), Landau Prize (USSR Academy of Sciences, 1983).

• A.Z. Patashinskii, V.L. Pokrovskii, "Fluctuation Theory of Phase Transitions," Pergamon Press 1979; ISBN 0080216641
• K. Levon, A. Margolina, A. Z. Patashinski, “Multiple percolation in conductive polymer blends”, Macromolecules 26, 4061 (1993).
• A. Z. Patashinski and M. A. Ratner “Structure changes in glassforming liquids upon cooling and compression”, J. Chem. Phys. 121 (10), 4711 (2004).
• A.Z. Patashinskii, V.L. Pokrovskii, and I.M. Khalatnikov, “Regge poles in quasiclassical potential well problems,” Sov. Phys. JETP 17, 1387-1397 (1963).