People Overview

Prof. Saul Teukolsky, Department Chair
Prof. Ritchie Patterson, Director of Graduate Studies
Prof. Carl Franck, Director of Undergraduate Studies

The department has 53 active professors that specialize in seven areas of research: Theoretical Condensed-Matter Physics, Theoretical Elementary Particle Physics, Astrophysics and General Relativity, Experimental Elementary Particle Physics, Accelerator Physics, Experimental Condensed-Matter Physics and Biological Physics. Emeritus faculty, Administrative Staff, Technical Staff, and Lecturers round out our program. The department has approximately 200 graduate students and 80 undergraduate majors.

Spotlight

Professor Vinay Ambegaokar is a theoretician—pen and paper are his primary tools. In his 44 years at Cornell he, with graduate students and other collaborators, has investigated many aspects of low temperature and condensed matter physics. Topics have included superconductivity, superfluidity, and (more recently) studies into the quantum mechanics of de-coherence. De-coherence has a loose connection to quantum computing, a field which Vinay jokes "has a great future, and always will."
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