Overview
- Editors:
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Y. Rabin
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Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel
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R. Bruinsma
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University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, USA
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Table of contents (30 chapters)
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An Historical Perspective (Une Perspective Historique)
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Review Papers
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- P. Boltenhagen, M. Kleman, O. D. Lavrentovich
Pages 5-32
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- Elie Raphaël, P.-G. de Gennes
Pages 57-71
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Research Papers
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Polymer Physics
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- J. Bastide, F. Boué, E. Mendes, A. Hakiki, A. Ramzi, J. Herz
Pages 99-102
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- Roger Ebengou, Jean-Pierre Cohen-Addad
Pages 103-106
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- A. Halperin, D. R. M. Williams
Pages 107-112
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- Jyotsana Lal, Jacques Bastide, Rama Bansil, Francois Boué
Pages 113-116
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- Kurt Kremer, Mark J. Stevens, Philip A. Pincus
Pages 117-123
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- Sergei Nechaev, Alexander Grosberg
Pages 125-128
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- U. Steiner, J. Klein, E. Eiser, A. Budkowski, L. Fetters
Pages 133-136
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Dynamics of Disordered Systems / Glasses
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- Yossi Lereah, Guy Deutscher
Pages 141-143
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- A. Brokman, A. J. Vilenkin
Pages 145-149
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- Semjon Stepanow, Thomas Nattermann, Lei-Han Tang, Heiko Leschhorn
Pages 155-158
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Percolation, Diffusion and Fractons
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About this book
A humoristic view of the physics of soft matter, which nevertheless has a ring of truth to it, is that it is an ill-defined subject which deals with ill-condensed matter by ill-defined methods. Although, since the Nobel prize was awarded to Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, this subject can be no longer shrugged-away as "sludge physics" by the physics community, it is still not viewed universally as "main stream" physics. While, at first glance, this may be considered as another example of inertia, a case of the "establishment" against the "newcomer", the roots of this prejudice are much deeper and can be traced back to Roger Bacon's conception about the objectivity of science. All of us would agree with the weaker form of this idea which simply says that the final results of our work should be phrased in an observer-independent way and be communicable to anybody who made the effort to learn this language. There exists, however, a stronger form of this idea according to which the above criteria of "objectivity" and "communicability" apply also to the process of scientific inquiry. The fact that major progress in the physics of soft matter was made in apparent violation of this approach, by applying intuition to problems which appeared to defy rigorous analysis, may explain why many physicists feel somewhat ill-at-ease with this subject.
Editors and Affiliations
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Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel
Y. Rabin
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University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, USA
R. Bruinsma
