Non-Equilibrium Statistics

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Gavin crooks' fluctuation theorems helped transform how we think about non equilibrium statistical mechanics. The early history of non equilibrium thinking was trying to take the microscopic language of equilibrium thromh dynamics that had succeeded in the nineteenth century. But then what happened, i think, partly driven in part by the emergence of a literature of numerical simulation in the nineties, was that you started to have practical questions.

Erwin Schrödinger’s famous book What Is Life? highlighted the connections between physics, and thermodynamics in particular, and the nature of living beings. But the exact connections between living organisms and the flow of heat and entropy remains a topic of ongoing research. Jeremy England is a leader in this field, deriving connections between thermodynamic relations and the processes of life. He is also an ordained rabbi who finds resonances between modern science and passages in the Hebrew Bible. We talk about it all, from entropy fluctuation theorems to how scientists should approach religion.

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Jeremy England received his Ph.D. in physics from Stanford University. He is currently Senior Director in the Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning group at GlaxoSmithKline. He has been a Rhodes scholar, a Hertz fellow, and was named one of Forbes‘s “30 Under 30 Rising Stars of Science.” His new book is Every Life is on Fire: How Thermodynamics Explains the Origins of Living Things.

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