Werner Krauth

I am a theoretical physicist at Ecole normale supérieure in Paris (France). In Oxford, I am excited to be Keeley visiting Fellow at Wadham College and Visiting Professor at the Rudolf Peierls Centre for theoretical Physics. I work in statistical physics and condensed-matter theory, with a special focus on the development of Monte Carlo algorithms. This continues a fascination with physics and with algorithms that goes back to my high-school days in Germany, in the 1970s. I have used my algorithms in a wide range of applications: from neural networks to liquids and solids, to real materials, and even to string theory. In the gardens of Wadham College, and in discussions here and there, I hope to come up with a number of new ones!

Research in physics is a big part of my life, but I am also very interested in teaching... I've done it all: In the classroom, in tutorials, in summer schools, on almost all continents. I've also been involved with Massive Open Online Course teaching. My MOOC on "Statistical Mechanics: Algorithms and Computations" has been followed by more than 100,000 students, and this in spite of the nerdy title. The MOOC was adapted from my textbook edited on Great Clarendon Street (not far from the Parks road of Wadham and of the Rudolf Peierls Centre). Work on the book was so intense that I think of myself as "Oxford-University-Press"-educated!

At Wadham and in Oxford, I am looking forward to varied, intense, exchanges with colleagues and students from all walks of life. In fact, these exchanges beautifully started as soon as I arrived here, in October 2023.