Christopher Jarzynski is an American physicist and distinguished university professor at

University of Maryland The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the Univ ...

's department of chemistry and biochemistry, department of physics, and institute for physical science and technology, and fellow of the National Academy of Sciences. He is known for his contributions to

non-equilibrium thermodynamics Non-equilibrium thermodynamics is a branch of thermodynamics that deals with physical systems that are not in thermodynamic equilibrium but can be described in terms of macroscopic quantities (non-equilibrium state variables) that represent an ex ...

and

statistical mechanics In physics, statistical mechanics is a mathematical framework that applies statistical methods and probability theory to large assemblies of microscopic entities. Sometimes called statistical physics or statistical thermodynamics, its applicati ...

, for which he was awarded the 2019

Lars Onsager Prize The Lars Onsager Prize is a prize in theoretical statistical physics awarded annually by the American Physical Society. Prize recipients receive a medal, certificate, and $10,000. It was established in 1993 by Drs. Russell and Marian Donnelly in m ...

. In 1997, he derived the now famous

Jarzynski equality The Jarzynski equality (JE) is an equation in statistical mechanics that relates free energy differences between two states and the irreversible work along an ensemble of trajectories joining the same states. It is named after the physicist Chris ...

, confirmation of which was cited by the Nobel Committee for Physics as an application of one of the winning inventions of the 2018

Nobel Prize in physics The Nobel Prize in Physics () is an annual award given by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for those who have made the most outstanding contributions to mankind in the field of physics. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the ...

—

optical tweezers Optical tweezers (originally called single-beam gradient force trap) are scientific instruments that use a highly focused laser beam to hold and move microscopic and sub-microscopic objects like atoms, nanoparticles and droplets, in a manner simil ...

Education and research

Jarzynski graduated from Our Lady of Good Counsel High School in Wheaton, Maryland in 1983. He then attended Princeton University from where he graduated with high honors with an A.B. in physics in 1987 after completing a senior thesis titled "An experimental search for 1.7 MEV

axion An axion () is a hypothetical elementary particle originally theorized in 1978 independently by Frank Wilczek and Steven Weinberg as the Goldstone boson of Peccei–Quinn theory, which had been proposed in 1977 to solve the strong CP problem ...

s in nuclear decays, 'the detector from hell'." He received his Ph.D. in physics in 1994 from

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

, under the supervision of Władysław J. Świątecki and Robert Grayson Littlejohn. At University of California, Berkeley, Jarzynski studied adiabatic invariants in chaotic classical systems. After graduating with a PhD, he spent ten years at

Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos National Laboratory (often shortened as Los Alamos and LANL) is one of the sixteen research and development Laboratory, laboratories of the United States Department of Energy National Laboratories, United States Department of Energy ...

, and since 2006 he has been faculty at the University of Maryland, College Park. His research is primarily in the area of non-equilibrium statistical mechanics, where he has contributed to an understanding of how the laws of thermodynamics apply to nanoscale systems. In 1997, he derived an equality, now known as the

, that relates nonequilibrium fluctuations to equilibrium free energy differences, a result that has been verified in numerous experiments and has found applications in biophysics and

computational chemistry Computational chemistry is a branch of chemistry that uses computer simulations to assist in solving chemical problems. It uses methods of theoretical chemistry incorporated into computer programs to calculate the structures and properties of mol ...

. His current interests also include the thermodynamics of information processing, as well as shortcuts to adiabaticity in quantum, classical and stochastic systems.

Awards and honours

He has been the recipient of a

Fulbright Fellowship The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States cultural exchange programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people o ...

, the

Sackler Prize The Sackler Prize is named for the Sackler family and can indicate any of the following three awards established by Raymond Sackler and his wife Beverly Sackler currently bestowed by the Tel Aviv University. The Sackler family is known for its rol ...

in the Physical Sciences, and the 2019

. He is a fellow of the

American Physical Society The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of ...

and the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...

. In 2020 he was elected to the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...

and awarded a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...

and Simons Fellowship. Jarzynski is a member of the editorial board of the '' Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment'', and an associate editor of the ''

Journal of Statistical Physics The ''Journal of Statistical Physics'' is a biweekly publication containing both original and review papers, including book reviews. All areas of statistical physics as well as related fields concerned with collective phenomena in physical systems ...

''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Jarzynski, Christopher 20th-century American physicists 21st-century American physicists Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellows of the American Physical Society Princeton University alumni University of California, Berkeley alumni University of Maryland, College Park faculty American academic journal editors University of Washington faculty Living people 1965 births