Rob Pisarski

Brookhaven National Laboratory

Physics Department
Bldg. 510A, Room 2-56
P.O. Box 5000
Upton, NY 11973-5000

(917) 865-9668
pisarski@bnl.gov

Pronouns: he, him

Education | Appointments | Awards | Video

Education

• Ph.D., Princeton University, 1975-1980. Thesis Nonlinear Sigma Models of Symmetric Spaces, under David Gross.  It was great being at Princeton, it was the Days of Instantons.  A comment in the grad student bar one night to Dan Stein about some simple homotopy theory led to my first theory paper, with Phil Anderson, on boojums in cholesterics.   My thesis came when "little" Migdal gave a talk on his work on the renormalization group in real space (which later came to fruition, in part, in density matrix renormalization group of Steven White), and on the S-matrix of the O(N) model in the vector representation by the Brothers Zamolodchikov.  David suggested looking at the tensor representation, which I did, without realizing it was actually a Grassmanian manifold.  In my last year I worked with David and Larry Yaffe on instantons at nonzero temperature, which was a lot of fun.  

• B.S. in Physics, summa cum laude, Yale University, 1971-1975. Wohlenberg Prize in Physics, Berkeley College.  I took Physics 25, "Intensive Introductory Physics" from Robert Berringer in my first year.  It was exhilarating.  The other course I remember my first year was in math from Shizuo Kakutani.  A brilliant mathematician, he convinced me that I wasn't a mathematician. In my second year, I learned Quantum Mechanics from Dick Slansky, for whom his beginning in the Divinity School at Harvard showed in his love of measurement theory in quantum mechanics (which consequently I detest).   My advisor in my senior year was Pierre Ramond, and I wrote a little fluff fluff of a thesis on solitions.  I also took Mathematical Physics from Feza Gursey my senior year, and still have his notes.  

• Born in Detroit, Michigan, grew up by Six Mile and Evergreen. I attended Ralph Waldo Emerson Elementary and Junior High School; in 1968 and 1969, Henry Ford High School; from 1969 to 1971, Grosse Pointe South High School. 

Professional Appointments

• Nuclear Theory Group, BNL, 2004 to present.

• Senior Scientist, High Energy Theory Group, BNL, October, 2000.

• Deputy Director for Theory, RIKEN/BNL Research Center, 1999 to 2000.

• Head of the Nuclear Theory Group, BNL, 1997 to 1999.

• Associate Editor for Physical Review D, 1993 to present.

• Scientist with tenure, High Energy Theory Group, BNL, 1992 to 2004.

• Scientist, High Energy Theory Group, BNL, 1989 to 1991.

• Associate Scientist at Fermilab, 1984 to 1989.  My best work at Fermilab was with Sumathi Rao, where we computed the shift in the topological quantization of a SU(N) gauge theory, where an integer q -> q + N, several years before the derivation by Ed Witten.  Sumathi and I also worked with Jochum van der Bij on the gravitational anomaly in 2+1 dimensions, which Jochum latter made something out of.  I was then denied tenure, and started working on what became Hard Thermal Loops with Eric Braaten, which was a most productive collaboration, indeed.

• Research Associate at the Institute for Theoretical Physics, the University of California at Santa Barbara, 1981 to 1984.  At the ITP then was Frank Wilczek, Emil Mottola, Nick Manton.  I first worked on the rho meson in a thermal bath.  I had to deal with personal stuff the summer before, and later regretted that I never talk to Appelquist about that, because he would have immediately thought of the J/Psi!  One day Frank has this crazy idea about CP violation in QCD if the anomaly went away.  I went up to Seattle for a while and realized that work I had done on SU(N)xSU(N)xU(1) sigma models would be useful for the chiral transition IF the anomaly went away.  I never though it would, but whatever, publish!  And it turns out it may be...  

• J.W. Gibbs Instructor in Physics at Yale University, 1979 to 1981.  Here I had the pleasure of working with Tom Appelquist, who taught me how to power count Feynman diagrams, a most useful technique.  I enjoyed lunches with the other faculty on the top of the biology tower, especially with Feza Gursey, who would rail at how fundamentalists in Iran didn't understand Islam. 

Awards & Recognition

• Sabbatical, Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2003 to 2004.

• Senior U.S. Scientist Award, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, 2003.

• Fellow, American Physical Society, 2000.

• Deputy Director for Theory, RIKEN/BNL Research Center, 1999 to 2000.

• Associate Editor for Physical Review D, 1993 to present.

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