Nigel is the Chancellor's Distinguished Professor in Physics at the University of California San Diego, and from 1985-2021 was at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC).
After his PhD at Cambridge, Nigel's postdoctoral work on the dynamics of snowflake growth helped launch the modern theory of pattern formation in nature. At UIUC, his work was instrumental to the discovery of d-wave pairing in high temperature superconductors. Nigel directed a NASA Astrobiology Institute, focused on the early evolution of life. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he pivoted from mathematical modeling of bacteria and viruses to computational epidemiology, advising the Governor of Illinois, and helping devise and run a COVID saliva PCR testing system at UIUC and later to over 1700 schools in Illinois.
Nigel received the American Physical Society's Leo P. Kadanoff Prize in statistical physics and nonlinear dynamics, and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Member of the US National Academy of Sciences.
Professional position
- Chancellor's Distinguished Professor of Physics, Department of Physics, University of California San Diego
Subject groups
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Mathematics
Applied mathematics and theoretical physics
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Astronomy and Physics
Biophysics, Condensed matter incl softmatter, liquids, nano-materials, Mathematical and theoretical physics, Statistical
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Engineering and Materials Science
Fluid dynamics
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Patterns in Populations
Ecology (incl behavioural ecology), Epidemiology (non-clinical), Evolution
