CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Nigel Goldenfeld has been elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences. Goldenfeld is the Swanlund Professor of Physics at the University of Illinois.
Goldenfeld is among 72 new members and 18 foreign associates announced by the academy on April 27. Election to the NAS is one of the highest professional honors a scientist can garner.
The 2,097 members and 409 foreign associates are an elite group distinguished by their outstanding contributions to the fields of science and technology.
Goldenfeld, also affiliated with the Institute for Genomic Biology, is an esteemed condensed matter physicist who has expanded his interests to biophysics in recent years. He focuses on two main areas of theory: dynamics and pattern formation, or how patterns evolve in time, and emergent states of matter, from superconductivity to the emergence of life.
He co-founded a software company, NumeriX, in 1996. NumeriX is an award-winning analytics software for derivatives and structured products.
Goldenfeld earned his doctorate in physics in 1982 at the University of Cambridge, England. He joined the faculty at the U. of I. in 1985. He also is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Physical Society, and he has been an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation fellow.