User:Mvitulli/sandbox5

John Toner
Born	(1955-10-12)October 12, 1955 Mineola, New York
Nationality	American
Citizenship	United States
Alma mater	MIT (BA 1977) Harvard University (MA 1979; PhD 1981)
Awards	Lars Onsager Prize (with Yuhai Tu) Simons Fellow in Theoretical Physics Gutzwiller Fellow at Max Planck Institute
Scientific career
Fields	Condensed Matter Physics
Institutions	University of Chicago (postdoc) Thomas J. Watson Research Center University of Oregon
Thesis	Defects and Other Topological Effects on Phase Transitions in Solids, Liquid Crystals, He3 Films, and Magnetic Systems
Doctoral advisor	David Robert Nelson
Website	https://cas.uoregon.edu/directory/physics/all/jjt

John Joseph Toner (physicist) (born October 12, 1955 in Mineola, New York) is an American physicist and professor emeritus at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon. He studies condensed matter physics; in particular, Toner "studies transport in disordered superconductors and models for the motion of flocks of birds.”

Education and career

Toner earned a a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1977. He did post-baccalaureate work in physics at Harvard University earning a master's degree in in 1979 and a doctorate in 1981. After his Ph.D. Toner was the James Franck Postdoctoral Fellow at the James Franck Institute, University of Chicago, 1981-1983. From 1983 he was at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center. In 1985 and 1993 he was a visiting researcher at the University of Bordeaux, CNRS, in Bordeaux, France. He has been researching and teaching at the University of Oregon since 1995. He retired from full-time teaching in December of 2023.

Research and innovation

In 1995, with Yuhai Tu, he created what is known as the Toner-Tu equation for swarm behavior (more precisely for collective behavior of self-moving objects that follow the behavior of their neighbors as they move). They combined properties of the Navier-Stokes equations of the hydrodynamics of compressible fluids with simple spin models of ferromagnets and found a collapse of the linearized hydrodynamic equations triggered by strong fluctuations. In contrast, their equation was able to predict the scaling exponents in the limit case of long wavelengths. An important point is the movement of the individual objects. If, on the other hand, one were to demand that the members of a swarm of people with a limited view of their surroundings only point in one direction, coordinated behavior would not occur (in two dimensions according to the Mermin-Wagner theorem. The Toner-Tu equation is applicable, for example, to swarms of birds and fish, bacteria, molecular motors in cells, cancer cells and, as a model demonstration, quantities of small plastic rods moving in the same direction on a vibrating table.

In addition to this phase described by the Toner-Tu equation, there are other phases of active matter that Toner studies theoretically (for example, a phase corresponding to liquid crystal layers, smectic P). In the incompressible case (constant density) this corresponds to a smectic liquid crystal in equilibrium, which in turn can be described by the KPZ equation (which is mostly used to describe interfaces). He also dealt with the reaction of swarms (herds) to external influences and on disordered surfaces and in disordered media.

With Sarkar and Basu, Toner developed the hydrodynamic theory of flocking at a solid-liquid interface. This theory has many applications to crucial movements inside the body including how carpets of cilia lining the interior of fallopian tubes give sperm a boost swimming up the tubes and how mucus is removed from the lungs.

Recognition

In 2006 Toner was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society "for a wealth of contributions to the theory of correlations, fluctuations, topological defects, and anomalous elasticity and hydrodynamics of partially ordered phases."

In 2021 Toner was chosen a Simons Fellow in Theoretical Physics by the Simons Foundation.

In 2020 he received the Lars Onsager Prize with Yuhai Tu and Tamás Vicsek.

In 2019–-20 he was a Gutzwiller Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Dresden.

Selected publications

• Toner, J.,Long-Range Order in a Two-Dimensional Dynamical Model: How Birds Fly Together, Phys. Rev. Lett., Band 75, 1995, p. 4326
• Toner, J. and Tu, Y. Flocks, herds, and schools: A quantitative theory of flocking, Phys. Rev. E, Band 58, 1998, p. 4828, [1] Abstract and Online
• Toner, J. and Ramaswamy, S., Hydrodynamics and phases of flocks, Annals of Physics, Band 318, 2005, S. 170–244
• Toner, J. The Physics of Flocking: Birth, Death, and Flight in Active Matter, Cambridge University Press; 2024.[2]

External links

• University of Oregon departmental website [3]
• John Toner's website [4]
• John Toner on Google Scholar [5]
• John Toner's page on German Wikipedia [6]

Category:1955 births Category:Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Category:Harvard University alumni Category:American physicists Category:University of Oregon faculty