Stuart Samuel (physicist)

Stuart Samuel is a theoretical physicist known for his work on the speed of gravity and for his work with Alan Kostelecký on spontaneous Lorentz violation in string theory, now called the Bumblebee model. He also made significant contributions in field theory and particle physics.

Samuel graduated from Princeton University with a Bachelor of Arts in mathematics in 1975, and in 1979, he graduated from the UC Berkeley, with a Doctor of Philosophy in physics. He was formerly a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, a professor of physics at Columbia University, and a professor of physics at City College of New York.

In early work, Samuel used particle field theory methods to obtain results in statistical mechanics. In particular, Samuel uncovered a particularly simple way to solve the two-dimensional Ising model. It was shown to be equivalent to a non-interacting field theory of fermionic-like particles. This allowed a rapid computation of the partition function and correlation functions. Samuel went on to treat certain interacting statistical mechanics systems using perturbative field theory.