18.10.21 – EPFL Professor Matthieu Wyart of the School of Basic Sciences has been elected Fellow of the American Physical Society.

The American Physical Society (APS) is the world’s largest organization of physicists. It was founded in 1899 “to advance and diffuse the knowledge of physics”. Today, the APS numbers some 50,000 members worldwide, and publishes over a dozen scientific journals, including the prestigious Physical Review and Physical Review Letters. It also runs more than twenty science conferences each year, and is a member society of the American Institute of Physics.

Despite its size, APS Fellows make up a mere 0.5% of the Society’s membership, making it a distinct honor. According to its criteria, fellowships is awarded for “exceptional contributions to the physics enterprise; e.g., outstanding physics research, important applications of physics, leadership in or service to physics, or significant contributions to physics education.”

This year, the APS has elected into its Fellows Professor Matthieu Wyart at EPFL’s Institute of Physics. Professor Wyatt directs the Physics of Complex Systems Laboratory. Complex systems, which his his research focuses on, include glassy materials (window glass, sand, spin and electron glasses) as well as dynamical biological systems such as neuronal or protein-regulation networks or entire ecosystems. Complex systems present an abundance of long-lived metastable states; they do not equilibrate easily, and therefore “remember” their past. Professor Wyart’s group develops tools in statistical mechanics and dynamical systems to address both associated conceptual and practical questions, e.g. how particles can move while avoiding each other in a crowded environment, like a dense granular flow.

The APS citation for Professor Wyart reads: “For seminal contributions to the understanding of amorphous materials and their rigidity transitions.”