John L. Cardy | |
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| Born | (1947-03-19)March 19, 1947 (age 78) |
| Nationality | British–American |
| Alma mater | Cambridge University |
| Known for | Conformal field theory Quantum quench |
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| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Theoretical Physics |
| Institutions | CERN University of California, Santa Barbara All Souls College, Oxford University of California, Berkeley |
John Lawrence CardyFRS (born 19 March 1947, England)[1] is aBritish–Americantheoreticalphysicist. He is best known for his work in theoreticalcondensed matter physics andstatistical mechanics, and in particular for research oncritical phenomena andtwo-dimensional conformal field theory.
He was an undergraduate and postgraduate student (now anHonorary Fellow) atDowning College, Cambridge, before moving to theUniversity of California, Santa Barbara, where he joined the faculty in 1977. In 1993, he moved to theUniversity of Oxford, where until 2014 he was aFellow ofAll Souls College (nowEmeritus) and aProfessor ofPhysics in theRudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics. He was a Visiting Professor and then a Research Physicist (2015–2023) at theUniversity of California, Berkeley.
His research prior to 1978 was inparticle physics, in particular high energyscattering theory. After this, he applied methods ofquantum field theory and therenormalization group tocondensed matter, especially tocritical phenomena in both pure and disordered equilibrium and non-equilibrium systems. In the 1980s he helped develop the theory ofconformal invariance and its applications to these problems, ideas which also had an impact instring theory and the physics ofblack holes.
In the 1990s he used conformal invariance to derive many exact results inpercolation and related probabilistic problems. This helped inspire the work of mathematicians which was recognised by the award of theFields Medal toWendelin Werner in 2006, and toStanislav Smirnov in 2010. More recently he has worked on questions ofquantum entanglement andnon-equilibriumdynamics inmany-body systems, and onnon-local field theory.
He was elected as aFellow of the Royal Society in 1991,[2] received theDirac Medal of theInstitute of Physics (UK) in 2000,[3] was awarded theLars Onsager Prize by theAPS in 2004,[4] theBoltzmann Medal byIUPAP in 2010,[5] theDirac Medal of theInternational Centre for Theoretical Physics in 2011,[6] and theBreakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics in 2024.[7]
He is most known for his contributions toconformal field theory. TheCardy formula for black hole entropy, the Cardy formula inpercolation theory,[8] and the Cardy conditions inboundary conformal field theory are named after him.
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