Herbert Wagner (born 6 April 1935) is a German theoretical physicist, who mainly works in

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 ...

. He is a

professor emeritus ''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retirement, retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus". ...

Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich, LMU or LMU Munich; ) is a public university, public research university in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. Originally established as the University of Ingolstadt in 1472 by Duke ...

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Biography

Wagner was one of the last students of German theoretical physicist and Nobel prize winner

Werner Heisenberg Werner Karl Heisenberg (; ; 5 December 1901 – 1 February 1976) was a German theoretical physicist, one of the main pioneers of the theory of quantum mechanics and a principal scientist in the German nuclear program during World War II. He pub ...

, with whom he worked on magnetism. As a postdoc at

Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...

, he and

David Mermin Nathaniel David Mermin (; born 30 March 1935) is a solid-state physicist at Cornell University best known for the eponymous Hohenberg–Mermin–Wagner theorem, his application of the term " boojum" to superfluidity, his textbook with Neil Ash ...

(and independently of Pierre Hohenberg) proved a "no-go theorem", otherwise known as the

Mermin–Wagner theorem In quantum field theory and statistical mechanics, the Hohenberg–Mermin–Wagner theorem or Mermin–Wagner theorem (also known as Mermin–Wagner–Berezinskii theorem or Mermin–Wagner–Coleman theorem) states that continuous symmetries cann ...

. The theorem states that continuous symmetries cannot be spontaneously broken at finite temperature in systems with sufficiently short-range interactions in dimensions

d \le 2

. Wagner is the academic father of a generation of statistical physicists. Many of his students and junior collaborators now occupy chairs in German universities, including Hans Werner Diehl (Essen), Siegfried Dietrich (Wuppertal, then Max-Planck-Institut für Metallforschung Stuttgart), Gerhard Gompper (

Forschungszentrum Jülich Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ; “Jülich Research Centre”) is a German national research institution that pursues interdisciplinary research in the fields of energy, information, and bioeconomy. It operates a broad range of research infrast ...

), Reinhard Lipowsky (

Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces The Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces (German: ''Max-Planck-Institut für Kolloid- und Grenzflächenforschung'') is located in Potsdam-Golm Science Park in Golm, Potsdam, Germany. It was founded in 1990 as a successor of the Institu ...

, Berlin), Hartmut Löwen (Düsseldorf), Klaus Mecke (Erlangen), and Udo Seifert (Stuttgart).

Awards

In 1992, Wagner was awarded an

honorary degree An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or '' ad hon ...

by the University of

Essen Essen () is the central and, after Dortmund, second-largest city of the Ruhr, the largest urban area in Germany. Its population of makes it the fourth-largest city of North Rhine-Westphalia after Cologne, Düsseldorf and Dortmund, as well as ...

(now

University of Duisburg-Essen The University of Duisburg-Essen () is a public research university in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. In the 2019 ''Times Higher Education World University Rankings'', the university was awarded 194th place in the world. It was originally ...

). In 2016 he received the

Max Planck Medal The Max Planck Medal is the highest award of the German Physical Society , the world's largest organization of physicists, for extraordinary achievements in theoretical physics. The prize has been awarded annually since 1929, with few exceptions ...

for his fundamental works on the statistical physics of low-dimensional systems.

References

20th-century German physicists 1935 births Academic staff of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich Living people Theoretical physicists German theoretical physicists German mathematical physicists Winners of the Max Planck Medal {{Germany-physicist-stub