Paul Chaikin

Biography

Paul Michael Chaikin was born and raised in Brooklyn. After graduating from Stuyvesant High School, New York, he attended the California Institute of Technology and earned his B.S. in physics in 1971. Paul pursued his Ph.D. in physics at the University of Pennsylvania under the supervision of Professors M. Anthony Jensen and Alan J. Heeger. His thesis, submitted in 1971, was titled “Probing Many-body Effects with Superconductivity.” Following a short postdoctoral stint in Heeger’s laboratory, Paul was appointed assistant professor of physics at the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA), in 1972. At UCLA, he rose rapidly through the ranks, becoming a full professor in 1980. In 1983, he assumed a professorship at the University of Pennsylvania, where he stayed until 1988 when he was appointed professor of physics at Princeton. In 1995, he published the graduate-level textbook Principles of Condensed Matter Physics, which he coauthored with Professor Tom Lubensky (UPenn), which rapidly assumed iconic status worldwide as the bible of “soft” condensed-matter physics (in the BBC comedy Keeping Up Appearances, the textbook was favorite bedtime reading for Hyacinth’s brother, Onslow).

Research Interest

Physics