Rate My Professor Daniel L. Stein

Daniel L. Stein earned his Sc.B. in Physics from Brown University in 1975, followed by an M.S. in Physics from Princeton University in 1977 and a Ph.D. in Condensed Matter Theory from Princeton in 1979, advised by P.W. Anderson. He began his academic career as Research Associate and Instructor at Princeton, advancing to Assistant Professor of Physics there from 1980 to 1987. In 1987, he joined The University of Arizona as Associate Professor of Physics, becoming full Professor in 1993 and serving as Head of the Department of Physics from 1995 to 2005. During this period, he was also Professor of Mathematics from 1997 to 2005, Member of the Applied Mathematics Program from 1988 to 2005, and External Faculty Member at the Santa Fe Institute from 1989 to 2002.

Stein's research specializes in statistical mechanics of disordered systems, particularly spin glasses, stochastic and nonequilibrium dynamics, and applications to biological physics. His pioneering contributions to the understanding of quenched randomness in condensed matter and noisy systems have been recognized by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Key publications include books such as "Spin Glasses and Complexity" co-authored with C.M. Newman (Princeton University Press, 2013) and "Lectures in the Sciences of Complexity" (Addison-Wesley, 1989); influential papers like "Models of Hierarchically Constrained Dynamics for Glassy Relaxation" with R.G. Palmer et al. (Physical Review Letters, 1984), "Non-Mean-Field Behavior of Realistic Spin Glasses" with C.M. Newman (Physical Review Letters, 1996), "A Model of Protein Conformational Substates" (PNAS, 1985), and "Spin Glasses" (Scientific American, 1989). He founded and directed the Complex Systems Summer School at Santa Fe Institute from 1988 and 1990-1998. Honors include the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (2014-2015), Fellow of the AAAS (2008), Fellow of the APS (1999), UA College of Science Distinguished Teaching Award (1995), and Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship (1985-1989). His work has profoundly influenced the fields of complex systems and statistical physics.