Wolfhard Janke turns 60
On December 11th, 2015, Wolfhard Janke, a member of the Editorial Board of ``Condensed Matter Physics'' and a leading expert in computer simulations in condensed matter physics, celebrated his 60th birthday.
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| Datum: | 2015 |
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| Sprache: | English |
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Інститут фізики конденсованих систем НАН України
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| Zitieren: | Wolfhard Janke turns 60 // Condensed Matter Physics. — 2015. — Т. 18, № 4. — С. 47001: 1–2. — англ. |
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irk-123456789-1558002019-06-18T01:29:27Z Wolfhard Janke turns 60 On December 11th, 2015, Wolfhard Janke, a member of the Editorial Board of ``Condensed Matter Physics'' and a leading expert in computer simulations in condensed matter physics, celebrated his 60th birthday. 2015 Article Wolfhard Janke turns 60 // Condensed Matter Physics. — 2015. — Т. 18, № 4. — С. 47001: 1–2. — англ. 1607-324X DOI:10.5488/CMP.18.47001 http://dspace.nbuv.gov.ua/handle/123456789/155800 en Condensed Matter Physics Інститут фізики конденсованих систем НАН України |
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On December 11th, 2015, Wolfhard Janke, a member of the Editorial Board of ``Condensed Matter Physics'' and a leading expert in computer simulations in condensed matter physics, celebrated his 60th birthday. |
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Wolfhard Janke turns 60 |
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Wolfhard Janke turns 60 Condensed Matter Physics |
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Wolfhard Janke turns 60 |
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Wolfhard Janke turns 60 |
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Wolfhard Janke turns 60 |
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Wolfhard Janke turns 60 |
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wolfhard janke turns 60 |
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Інститут фізики конденсованих систем НАН України |
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2015 |
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Wolfhard Janke turns 60 // Condensed Matter Physics. — 2015. — Т. 18, № 4. — С. 47001: 1–2. — англ. |
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Condensed Matter Physics |
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2025-07-14T08:02:03Z |
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2025-07-14T08:02:03Z |
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1837608598184656896 |
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Condensed Matter Physics, 2015, Vol. 18, No 4, 47001: 1–2
DOI: 10.5488/CMP.18.47001
http://www.icmp.lviv.ua/journal
Personalia
Wolfhard Janke turns 60
On December 11th, 2015, Wolfhard Janke, a member of the Editorial Board of “Condensed Matter
Physics” and a leading expert in computer simulations in condensed matter physics, celebrated his 60th
birthday.
Wolfhard was born and grew up in West Berlin. He studied physics and mathematics at the Freie
Universität Berlin, where he received his PhD working under the guidance of Hagen Kleinert in 1985.
He was awarded the Joachim Tiburtius Prize of the City of Berlin for the best doctoral dissertation
in 1986. He stayed at this university for his habilitation degree, in time to see the Berlin Wall come
down and Germany reunited in 1989/1990. After interludes at Florida State University in Tallahas-
see and Forschungszentrum Jülich in 1991/1992, he won a prestigious Heisenberg Fellowship of the
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) that brought him to Kurt Binder’s group at Johannes Gutenberg-
Universität Mainz, where he worked from 1992 until 1997. In 1998, he was appointed to a Chair in The-
oretical Physics at Universität Leipzig. There, apart from establishing an extremely productive and still
growing research group in statistical physics, he has served in a number of senior positions, including
that of Vice Dean of the Faculty of Physics and Earth Sciences as well as the directorship of the Institute
for Theoretical Physics and that of the Centre for Theoretical Sciences. He was also appointed to a num-
ber of external faculty positions, most recently in 2015 as Adjunct Professor of the Center for Simulational
Physics at the University of Georgia, USA.
His oeuvre is remarkable not only for its variety, but also its sheer size: he has over 400 scientific pub-
lications to date, with subjects ranging through quantum gravity, the XY model, biopolymers and even the
modelling of football scores. Wolfhard’s research started in field theory in Kleinert’s group in Berlin, but
he soon turned his attention to studies of condensed-matter systems by means of computer simulations.
Nonetheless, his background in field theory and high-energy physics has influenced his research topics,
the rigour of his methods and his perspective to the present day. Wolfhard’s accuracy and meticulous
attention to detail are legendary and form a cornerstone of his excellent reputation in the community.
The leitmotif for most of his work has been the study of phase transitions and critical phenomena,
although he has also made important contributions to the development of discrete approaches to quan-
tum gravity, studying the Regge and dynamical triangulations approaches. He has determined precise
critical exponents for a large range of systems, studied logarithmic scaling corrections, percolation and
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self-avoiding walks, the nucleation behaviour of the ordered phase and the effect of quenched disorder
on systems undergoing phase transitions, including the spin-glass problem, to name but a few examples.
Another important focus of his prolific research activity has been the study of systems undergoing first-
order phase transitions. This ranges from one of his first papers, written during his PhD studies, dealing
with 2D disclination melting, through the study of interface tensions with the multicanonical method,
to some of his most recent works on modified scaling in discontinuous transitions in the presence of
degeneracies.
While much of his work until the early 2000s dealt with spin systems, in the last 10 years his focus has
shifted towards soft-matter problems such as structural transitions in polymer systems. The very same
imaginative use of numerical methods and rigorous analysis he showed in the studies of spin systems
has also been applied to simulations of coarse-grained models for polymers and proteins. In an extensive
series of works, he investigated adsorption phenomena of polymers at surfaces and the confinement of
macromolecules in different geometries.
An underlying theme of much of his research is the advancement of the methodology for Monte Carlo
simulations in statistical and soft-matter physics. He was one of the first researchers to apply cluster
updates to perform high-precision studies of the critical behaviour of XY and Heisenberg models. He
developed and used variants of the multicanonical method to study many different systems undergoing
first-order transitions and also models with complex free-energy landscapes, where conventional tech-
niques fail. Wolfhard also proposed refinements to many other numerical techniques, including parallel
tempering and the statistical analysis of simulation data. He is widely regarded as one of the leading
practitioners in the field.
Wolfhard is very active in research training and dissemination. He has supervisedmore than 40 PhDs,
Diploma and MSc graduates. He has also been a tireless organiser of conferences and workshops, in-
cluding the Spring Meeting of the German Physical Society (2002) and the annual meeting of the Middle
European Cooperation in Statistical Physics (2009). His most well-known organisational activity, that has
become something of an institution in its own right, is the CompPhys series of meetings held at the end
of November every year in Leipzig. Not only has this series of events, which was held for the 16th time
this year, turned out to be a powerhouse of new and existing collaborations, but it has also proved to be
an extremely popular social occasion. It forms a non-negotiable recurring item in the calendars of many
statistical physicists.
Above all, however, we cherish Wolfhard for his deep insights that he is always happy to share in dis-
cussions and his sociable character that has been the nucleus for the many collaborations he has initiated
over the years. These have resulted in a number of longtime partnerships, including international net-
work projects such as a sequence of RTN projects on Random Geometries with partners all over Europe,
and the International Doctoral College for the Statistical Physics of Complex Systems, Leipzig-Lorraine-
Lviv-Coventry (L4).
The CMP Editorial board, on behalf of numerous colleagues and friends around the world, thanks
Wolfhard Janke for his important contributions to our field, warmly congratulates him on the occasion
of his jubilee and wishes him many further successes on his way.
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