Peter Schiffer

The behavior of avalanches has generated interest among physicists for the insights that they can provide about many other systems, not least of which is how snow falls down a mountainside. To that end, a team of researchers studied microscopic arrays of nanomagnets that provide the first experimental demonstration of a classic theoretical model, known as the “one-dimensional random field Ising model.” The results were published today in Physical Review Letters. 

As a Yale undergraduate, Peter Schiffer ’88 admits he spent more time at the Yale Political Union (YPU) than in the lab. It’s rather ironic that, nearly three decades later, the Piersonite and Progressive Party member has returned to Yale as vice provost for research, a role “intended to support research and scholarship across the entire enterprise and not just science and engineering — the social sciences, the humanities, and the arts.” Read more…