At this year’s International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM), Artur Avila received the Fields Medal for his fundamental work relating to (among other things) the fundamental thermodynamics, kinetics, and micro-kinetics of ice-crystal growth in clouds (and similar crystallization/liquefaction processes).
Mathematically-minded Climate Etc readers — math-minded climate-science students especially — may enjoy watching Etienne Ghys’ laudation of Artur Avila’s work, for which Tim Gowers provides a lively and humorous background survey
Remark 21st century mathematical physics has advanced far beyond the dated (and now generally deprecated) thermodynamical concepts of Prigogine’s generation.
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