Robert Haakon Swendsen is a Professor of Physics at

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The institution was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools. In 1912, it became the Carnegie Institu ...

. He is known in the computational physics community for the Swendsen-Wang algorithm, the Monte Carlo Renormalization Group, and related methods that enable efficient computational studies of equilibrium phenomena near phase transitions. He is the 2014 Recipient of the Aneesur Rahman Prize for Computational Physics from 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 ...

. Swendsen completed his undergraduate studies at

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...

and his PhD at

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...

. Swendsen is also known for his

pedagogy Pedagogy (), most commonly understood as the approach to teaching, is the theory and practice of learning, and how this process influences, and is influenced by, the social, political, and psychological development of learners. Pedagogy, taken ...

. He received Carnegie Mellon's Julius Ashkin Teaching Award in 2014 He is also known for his textbook, ''An Introduction to Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics'' (2nd ed. 2020). Oxford University Press.

References

Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 21st-century American physicists Carnegie Mellon University faculty Yale University alumni University of Pennsylvania alumni Computational physicists {{US-physicist-stub