Robert Zwanzig
Robert Walter Zwanzig (born Brooklyn, New York, 9 April 1928 – died Bethesda, Maryland, May 15, 2014) was an American theoretical physicist and chemist who made important contributions to the statistical mechanics of irreversible processes, protein folding, and the theory of liquids and gases. Background Zwanzig received his bachelor's degree from Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute in 1948 and his master's degree from 1950 at the University of Southern California. In 1952 he completed a doctorate in physical chemistry at Caltech under the supervision of John G. Kirkwood. His thesis title was Quantum Hydrodynamics: a statistical mechanical theory of light scattering from simple non-polar fluids. From 1951 to 1954 he worked as a post-doctoral researcher in theoretical chemistry at Yale University, and from 1954 to 1958 he was an assistant professor in chemistry at Johns Hopkins University. From 1958 to 1966 he was a physical chemist at the National Bureau of Standards and from 1966 to 1979 he was a research professor at the Institute for Physical Science and Technology of the University of Maryland, where until 1988 he held he title of distinguished professor. From 1974 to 1975 he was a Fairchild Scholar at Caltech. From 1988 onwards he was a