Founded by physical chemists like Flory and brought into the mainstream of theoretical physics by visionaries like de Gennes, over the last eighty years polymer physics has grown into a mature, rich, and exciting discipline. Now expanded to include also colloids, liquid crystals, interfaces, etc, polymer and soft matter physics span fundamental statistical mechanics and field theory, most advanced materials, as well as technological and biological frontiers. Nevertheless, a comprehensive exposition to fundamental concepts of polymer and soft matter science is still largely missing, neglected in most physics departments, ignored by many workers in biological realm, and underappreciated even by chemical engineers. The goal of this year’s Boulder summer school is to fill this gap and provide the physics community with a relatively comprehensive course in the fundamentals of polymer and soft matter physics with emphasis on their biological applications.
Scientific Coordinators
Alexander Grosberg, New York University
Michael Rubinstein, University of North Carolina
Eugenia Kumacheva, University of Toronto
Leo Radzihovsky, University of Colorado
Expected lecturers and seminar speakers
Paul Chaikin (New York), Noel Clark (Boulder), Alexei Finkelstein (Moscow), Daan Frenkel (Cambridge), Alexander Grosberg (New York), Jean-Francois Joanny (Institute Curie), Kurt Kremer (Mainz), Eugenia Kumacheva (Toronto), Frederick MacKintosh (Amsterdam), Tom McLeish (Durham), Philip Pincus (Santa Barbara), David Pine (New York), Michael Rubinstein (Chapel Hill), Samuel Safran (Weizmann Institute), David Weitz (Harvard), Ekaterina Zhulina (Pittsburgh)
For further information please email: boulder.organizer2012@yale.edu or visit the Boulder summer school website.
