Shang-keng Ma

He transferred in 1959 from the National Taiwan University to the University of California, Berkeley. There he graduated in 1962 with a bachelor's degree in science and in 1966 with a Ph.D. His Ph.D. thesis Correlations of Photons from a Thermal Source was supervised by Kenneth M. Watson. As a postdoc in 1966, Ma went to the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) to study with Keith Brueckner. Ma's outstanding ability earned him a faculty appointment at UCSD in less than a year.[2] He was at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) from September 1968 to June 1969 and in the autumn of 1970.[4] There he worked with Shau-Jin Chang on the infinite-energy limit of Feynman diagrams[2][5] and with Roger Dashen on the S-matrix formulation of statistical mechanics.[2][6] In 1971 he became a tenured faculty member of the UCSD physics department[7] and became a Sloan Research Fellow.[8]

He visited Cornell University in 1972 where he became involved in development of the renormalization theory of critical phenomena. Gradually, his interest shifted to statistical physics.[9]

In 1975, with Yoseph Imry, he published the seminal paper on the effect of a random magnetic field on ferro-magnetic order. Their model has come to be known as the random field Ising model.[2]

In 1976 Ma was a visiting scientist at Paris-Saclay University and published his paper Renormalization group by Monte Carlo methods, which introduced a technique which "has evolved into a powerful technology that is widely used today for the numerical study of critical phenomena."[2]

In 1981, Ma formulated the "coincidence counting" method for the calculation of entropy from the phase space trajectory. He felt strongly that such a dynamical formulation of entropy was crucial for understanding random and other systems exhibiting metastability.[2]

In the two academic years 1977–1978 and 1981–1982 he taught in Taiwan at Tsinghua University, where he wrote in Chinese an advanced text on statistical mechanics — the book, published in 1983, "eschews the traditional approach built on the Gibbs ensemble." World Scientific published an English translation in 1985. In 1986 World Scientific also published a memorial volume in honor of Ma.[10]

Upon his death he was survived by his widow and two children.[7]

• Ma, Shang-Keng; Woo, Chia-Wei (1967). "Theory of a Charged Bose Gas. I". Physical Review. 159 (1): 165–175. Bibcode:1967PhRv..159..165M. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.159.165.
• Béal-Monod, M. T.; Ma, Shang-Keng; Fredkin, D. R. (1968). "Temperature Dependence of the Spin Susceptibility of a Nearly Ferromagnetic Fermi Liquid". Physical Review Letters. 20 (17): 929–932. Bibcode:1968PhRvL..20..929B. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.20.929.
• Chang, Shau-Jin; Ma, Shang-Keng (1969). "Feynman Rules and Quantum Electrodynamics at Infinite Momentum". Physical Review. 180 (5): 1506–1513. Bibcode:1969PhRv..180.1506C. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.180.1506.
• Dashen, Roger; Ma, Shang-Keng; Bernstein, Herbert J. (1969). "S-Matrix Formulation of Statistical Mechanics". Physical Review. 187 (1): 345–370. Bibcode:1969PhRv..187..345D. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.187.345. (over 600 citations)
• Gould, Harvey; Ma, Shang-Keng (1969). "Low-Temperature Ion Mobility in Interacting Fermi Liquids". Physical Review. 183 (1): 338–348. Bibcode:1969PhRv..183..338G. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.183.338.
• Chang, Shau-Jin; Ma, Shang-Keng (1969). "Multiphoton Exchange Amplitudes at Infinite Energy". Physical Review. 188 (5): 2385–2404. Bibcode:1969PhRv..188.2385C. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.188.2385.
• Dashen, Roger; Ma, Shang‐Keng (1970). "Singular Three‐Body Amplitudes in the Theory of the Third Virial Coefficient". Journal of Mathematical Physics. 11 (4): 1136–1143. Bibcode:1970JMP....11.1136D. doi:10.1063/1.1665239.
• Dashen, Roger; Ma, Shang‐Keng (1971). "Singularities in Forward Multiparticle Scattering Amplitudes and the S‐Matrix Interpretation of Higher Virial Coefficients". Journal of Mathematical Physics. 12 (4): 689–715. Bibcode:1971JMP....12..689D. doi:10.1063/1.1665636.
• Dashen, Roger; Ma, Shang-Keng (1971). "Scattering Theory and Current Correlations in Classical Gases". Physical Review A. 4 (2): 700–707. Bibcode:1971PhRvA...4..700D. doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.4.700.
• Halperin, B. I.; Hohenberg, P. C.; Ma, S. K. (1972). "Calculation of dynamic critical properties using Wilson's expansion methods". Physical Review Letters. 29 (23): 1548–1551. Bibcode:1972PhRvL..29.1548H. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.29.1548.
• Ma, Shang-Keng (1972). "Critical Exponents for Charged and Neutral Bose Gases above λ Points". Physical Review Letters. 29 (19): 1311–1314. Bibcode:1972PhRvL..29.1311M. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.29.1311.
• Fisher, Michael E.; Ma, Shang-Keng; Nickel, B. G. (1972). "Critical Exponents for Long-Range Interactions". Physical Review Letters. 29 (14): 917–920. Bibcode:1972PhRvL..29..917F. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.29.917. S2CID 67782027. (over 1100 citations)
• Ma, Shang-Keng (1973). "Introduction to the Renormalization Group". Reviews of Modern Physics. 45 (4): 589–614. Bibcode:1973RvMP...45..589M. doi:10.1103/RevModPhys.45.589.
• Halperin, B. I.; Lubensky, T. C.; Ma, Shang-Keng (1974). "First-Order Phase Transitions in Superconductors and Smectic-ALiquid Crystals". Physical Review Letters. 32 (6): 292–295. Bibcode:1974PhRvL..32..292H. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.32.292. (over 1000 citations)
• Halperin, B. I.; Hohenberg, P. C.; Ma, Shang-Keng (1974). "Renormalization-group methods for critical dynamics: I. Recursion relations and effects of energy conservation". Physical Review B. 10 (1): 139–153. Bibcode:1974PhRvB..10..139H. doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.10.139. (over 600 citations)
• Imry, Yoseph; Ma, Shang-Keng (1975). "Random-Field Instability of the Ordered State of Continuous Symmetry". Physical Review Letters. 35 (21): 1399–1401. Bibcode:1975PhRvL..35.1399I. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.35.1399. (over 3100 citations)
• Ma, Shang-Keng; Rajaraman, R. (1975). "Comments on the absence of spontaneous symmetry breaking in low dimensions". Physical Review D. 11 (6): 1701–1704. Bibcode:1975PhRvD..11.1701M. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.11.1701.
• Ma, Shang-Keng; Mazenko, Gene F. (1975). "Critical dynamics of ferromagnets in6−εdimensions: General discussion and detailed calculation". Physical Review B. 11 (11): 4077–4100. Bibcode:1975PhRvB..11.4077M. doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.11.4077.
• Dashen, Roger F.; Ma, Shang-Keng; Rajaraman, R. (1975). "Finite-temperature behavior of a relativistic field theory with dynamical symmetry breaking". Physical Review D. 11 (6): 1499–1508. Bibcode:1975PhRvD..11.1499D. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.11.1499.
• Aharony, Amnon; Imry, Yoseph; Ma, Shang-Keng (1976). "Comments on the critical behavior of random systems". Physical Review B. 13 (1): 466–473. Bibcode:1976PhRvB..13..466A. doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.13.466.
• Aharony, Amnon; Imry, Yoseph; Ma, Shang-Keng (1976). "Lowering of Dimensionality in Phase Transitions with Random Fields". Physical Review Letters. 37 (20): 1364–1367. Bibcode:1976PhRvL..37.1364A. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.37.1364. (over 450 citations)
• Ma, Shang-keng (1976). "Renormalization group by Monte Carlo methods". Physical Review Letters. 37 (8): 461–464. Bibcode:1976PhRvL..37..461M. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.37.461.
• Ma, Shang-Keng (1978). "Effect of Random Impurities on Long Range Order". Chinese Journal of Physics. 16 (2): 146. Bibcode:1978ChJPh..16..146M.
• Ma, Shang-keng (1981). "Calculation of entropy from data of motion". Journal of Statistical Physics. 26 (2): 221–240. Bibcode:1981JSP....26..221M. doi:10.1007/BF01013169. S2CID 119795687.

• Modern Theory of Critical Phenomena. Frontiers in Physics. Vol. 46. Addison-Wesley. 1976.
  • Modern theory of critical phenomena. Sarat Book House. 1982. ISBN 9788187169864. 1982
  • Ma, Shang-Keng (2018). Modern Theory of Critical Phenomena. doi:10.4324/9780429498886. ISBN 9780429967436.
• Statistical Mechanics. World Scientific. 1985. ISBN 9789971966072. 1985