Stealing the Gold

Abstract

Stealing the Gold is a book celebrating the contributions of Sam Edwards to a wide range of topics in theoretical physics. The range is indeed wide. Edwards' work has had a profound influence on many areas including turbulence, polymer physics, spin glasses and (most recently) granular media. These areas are certainly diverse but they share some common features. In particular, the issues and their precise definitions are elusive and it is not obvious what tools are available to attack the problems. In many of these areas Edwards has changed the way we look at and attack these problems. As an example, let me take the area that I know best. When a polymer molecule is dissolved to form a dilute solution, what shape is the molecule? In particular, how does some distance measure such as the radius of gyration depend on the molecular weight? The difficulty in treating the problem and answering this question comes from the fact that the monomers interact with one another—in the simplest picture they take up space to the exclusion of other monomers. When Edwards came to this field there were some perturbation treatments which we now know to be inadequate, and a physically appealing theory by Paul Flory which contained some uncontrolled approximations. Edwards wrote a paper on this topic in 1965 which completely changed the field. His idea was to use a self-consistent field approach, reminiscent of the Hartree treatment of the atom, and self-consistent field methods are now part of the stock-in-trade of polymer physicists. This ability to break into a new field and make an important contribution, and then do the same thing again for another new field, is one of the things that makes Edwards stand out among theoretical physicists. What about the book? It is partly a collection of Edwards' papers covering a variety of areas of condensed matter physics. It is useful to have these eleven papers all in one place and the choice of papers seems to me to be excellent. I had read about half of them before I saw the book and I enjoyed dipping into some (to me) new ones, as well as looking again at some old favourites such as his paper with Anderson on spin glasses and his intriguing and highly original paper on incorporating topological constraints into statistical mechanics. The book also has a series of short chapters discussing the various fields in which Edwards has worked, and highlighting his contributions. These are written by various authors and are largely written in an engaging and not-too-technical style. I found that I was learning a lot about relatively unfamiliar areas as I skimmed or read these contributions. I especially enjoyed the final chapter by Geoff Allen which tells us something about polymer physics at Manchester in the 1960s, and about Sam Edwards' early work in this area. The book is interesting to read and well worth owning. It is a fitting tribute to Sam Edwards and to his pioneering contributions to theoretical physics.