Paul Goldbart

About

Paul M. Goldbart is a theoretical physicist who currently serves as R.E. Boyer Chair, Dean of the College of Natural Sciences, and Professor of Physics at The University of Texas at Austin. Passionate about education and research, he has taught an array of classes, ranging from graduate-level quantum mechanics to introductory electricity and magnetism for undergraduates. His research reaches widely, from nanoscience, to vulcanized materials and liquid crystals, to superconductors, superfluids and ultra-cold gases, to chaos and quantum entanglement – almost all of it done with his graduate students and postdoctoral researchers, quite a number of whom have gone on to join the faculties of research-intensive institutions. He interacts widely, with both experimentalists and theorists, and has co-authored approximately 150 journal articles and a textbook: Mathematics for Physics – A Guided Tour for Graduate Students. As an academic leader, Goldbart focuses on enhancing the student experience, preparing faculty for success in research and instruction, advancing inclusive excellence as well as the environment for staff, extending and enhancing core experimental facilities, campus and public engagement with science, alumni relations, and development. He has held various faculty and leadership positions at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Georgia Institute of Technology, the Aspen Center for Physics, and the American Physical Society. A fellow of the U.K.’s Institute of Physics, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Physical Society, he holds degrees from Cambridge University, UCLA, and Imperial College London. Goldbart stands with Carl Sagan in regarding science as a Candle in the Dark, pointing humanity towards a better tomorrow as much via the beauty of its ideas as through the power of its results.

Featured Work
Mathematics for Physics – A Guided Tour for Graduate Students