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I am a statistical physicist, i.e. a physicist who uses the framework of Statistical Physics to study the macroscopic properties of microscopic particles obeying to Boltzmann, Fermi-Dirac, Bose-Einstein, or the more specific anyonic statistics holding only in a two dimensional world.

I accomplish this bottom-up process either through analytical perturbative and non-perturbative tools and through Monte-Carlo simulations which are able to determine the exact numerical solution for the many-body equations underlying the microscopic physical system under study. I do this in the endless process of comparing theoretical results and predictions with Laboratory observations.

I am a Ph.D. from the Physics Department of the University of Trieste (Italy) and I worked in the Physics Departments of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA), of the University Ca' Foscari of Venice (Italy), and of the University of Stellenbosch (South-Africa).




The Janus Fluid
Of particular interest to me is the concept of fluid, a particular realization of a microscopic many-body system, allowing for the gas, the liquid, and the solid phases. Fluids can either be found spontaneously in Nature or can be engineered in a Laboratory. I recently wrote a short book on one particular fluid recently engineered in the Laboratory: "The Janus Fluid: A Theoretical Perspective". The anisotropic interaction between two particles of this fluid allows for the formation of unconventional self-assembly where the stable clusters: the micelles and the vesicles, are weakly interacting among themselves. And this is responsible for the stability of the vapor phase at higher densities at low temperatures.



Discoveries due to the observation of mathematics
In the scientific method usually we observe two kinds of processes going in opposite directions. The process where starting from the observation of nature one develops the mathematical model of the given phenomenon, which often stimulated the development of mathematics itself. And the opposite feedback process where starting from the mathematical constraints, evolution or solution of a given model one develops the experiment necessary to observe in a laboratory or in nature the predicted phenomenon, which often stimulated the development of new technologies. Most often this second kind of process have had simply the scope of an imitation of nature in a laboratory, that is the reproduction of natural phenomena using the techniques at our disposal. More rarely it allowed to uncover, ``discover'', new phenomena not previously observed in a laboratory or in nature. In this book we collect some examples of the successful realization of this kind of discoveries occurred in the history of physics. We give 7 notorious examples which can be read one each day. So that the first part of the book can be read in one week. The book is intended both for the lay reader and for the more educated one. We couldn't avoid to use some equations and give for granted some basic knowledge in mathematics and physics. Even if we tried to extract only the strictly necessary equations to understand the mathematical constraints leading to the discovery, we found nevertheless necessary to show them because of their beauty and profound scientific meaning. The book is written so that it can be fully understood by a good graduate student in physics. But the less educated reader should not be scared by the equations and should try to grasp the meaning from the various descriptive and historical information surrounding them. The second part of the book, the last two chapters, deals with the complex relationship between mathematics, the arts and philosophy and about some ontological and theological problems, like the anthropic principle, raised by the existence of mathematics as an exact science and physics as a basic, fundamental, hard, and empirical science. Is the beauty of mathematics a fruit of God or just of the human beings? This part of the book has a more popularization character and unlike the first part contains very few equations.
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