Published by the MIT News Office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.
Published by the MIT News Office at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Cambridge, Mass.
1948 PROFESSOR Mehran Kardar Receives 1991 Edgerton Award Associate Professor Mehran Kardar of the Department of Physics, a condensed matter theorist whose research and publications have gained him wide recognition, has received the 1991 Harold E. Edgerton Award. The announcement was made at the April meeting of the MIT faculty by Professor Ira Dyer, chairman of the selection committee for the award. Other committee members were Professors Jae Lim and Irwin Oppenheim and Associate Professor David Pesetsky. The award, which carries an honorarium of $5,000, was established in 1983 with contributions made by the faculty in honor of Professor Harold E. Edgerton. Professor Edgerton died January 4, 1990. The faculty responded to the announcement with applause and Professor Kardar rose to make brief remarks thanking his colleagues for the honor. The award recognizes young faculty members for outstanding achievement in research, scholarship and teaching. "Mehran Kardar has established himself at a young age as a leader in physics," the citation read by Professor Dyer said. "His extraordinary talents and commitment in physics research are matched by his talents and commitment as a teacher, by his good citizenship within the Institute community, and by his general friendliness, selfless helpfulness and dignified modesty." Dr. Kardar, 33, the Class of 1948 Professor, has focused his recent work on the static and dynamic properties of surfaces, interfaces, paths, and polymers. "By developing a continuum field theory for random manifolds, such as polymers and membranes, he established the roles of elasticity, rigidity, and interactions in determining the macroscopic phases of such objects," the citation said. This work, together with his research on interfaces and paths in random media and on evolving interfaces, "have received wide recognition, as seen by recent invited lectures by him in Belgium, Brazil, Colombia, France, Hungary, Italy and the Netherlands. . . ." Professor Kardar, a recent recipient of a Presidential Young Investigator Award, has been a prolific writer. "His publications contain deep contributions in a variety of topics, appear in the top journals, and are mostly coauthored with the students who have studied with him. . . . "The graduate statistical mechanics courses that Kardar developed and now teaches are truly outstanding, in the view of many students and faculty alike. He attracts an audience from the departments of physics and chemistry and chemical, electrical, and nuclear engineering, from both MIT and other institutions (Harvard, BU, Brown)," the citation continued. Professor Kardar was awarded the Graduate Student Council Departmental Teaching Award for this course sequence in 1990. Professor Kardar is deeply involved with the Institute's community life at several levels. "For the past three years, he has served as a Fellow at the Ashdown House. He has been involved in diverse house activities and has arranged to take groups of students to symphonies, ballets and basketball games. He is very concerned and interactive with condensed matter theory students, from extensive conference-talk trainings to hikes and weekly participation in dinners and basketball games," the citation concluded. Professor Kardar received the bachelor of arts in natural sciences (1979) and the master of arts (1983) from Cambridge University, England, and the PhD from MIT (1983). He was a junior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows from 1983-86 and was appointed to the MIT faculty as assistant professor of physics in 1986. He became an associate professor in 1990.