Dr. Frank H. Stillinger
- Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Yale
- Research at Bell Labs and Princeton
- fhstillinger@gmail.com
Frank Stillinger
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Frank H. Stillinger

ACS Award in Theoretical Chemistry presented to Frank H. Stillinger

For pioneering computer simulations of water; developing inherent structure theory of liquids and glasses; and profound theoretical insights on water, fluid interfaces, and particle packings

Sponsored by Dell Incorporated

Lecture given at the American Chemical Society Award Meeting April 9, 2013

"Chiral Symmetry Breaking Models for Pre-biotic Environments"

J. Phys. Chem. B -- Frank H. Stillinger Festschrift    Journal of Physical
   Chemistry B
   Frank H. Stillinger
   Festschrift
   [Table of Contents]

 

   Frank's autobiography
   "The factors that capture attention and create long-term interests in young children have been, and will remain, subjects of speculation and debate." (more)

Tributes

 		 
 
  • Complete Publications List
  • Talks
  • Principal Accomplishments
  • Activities
  • Special Lectures
  • Coauthors
  • Postdoctoral Collaborators
  • Honors and Awards
  • Personal Information

     

    		•   
    Energy Landscapes, Inherent   Structures, and Condensed-Matter Phenomena Energy Landscapes, Inherent Structures, and Condensed-Matter Phenomena,
    Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ 2016.

    "This book presents an authoritative and in-depth treatment of potential energy landscape theory, a powerful analytical approach to describing the atomic and molecular interactions in condensed-matter phenomena. Drawing on the latest developments in the computational modeling of many-body systems, Frank Stillinger applies this approach to a diverse range of substances and systems, including crystals, liquids, glasses and other amorphous solids, polymers, and solvent-suspended biomolecules.

    "Stillinger focuses on the topography of the multidimensional potential energy hypersurface created when a large number of atoms or molecules simultaneously interact with one another. He explains how the complex landscape topography separates uniquely into individual 'basins,' each containing a local potential energy minimum or 'inherent structure,' and he shows how to identify interbasin transition states - saddle points - that reside in shared basin boundaries. Stillinger describes how inherent structures and their basins can be classified and enumerated by depth, curvatures, and other attributes, and how those enumerations lead logically from vastly complicated multidimensional landscapes to properties observed in the real three-dimensional world.

    "Essential for practitioners and students across a variety of fields, the book illustrates how this approach applies equally to systems whose nuclear motions are intrinsically quantum mechanical or classical, and provides novel strategies for numerical simulation computations directed toward diverse condensed-matter systems." -- from Amazon website.


    Frank's research interests include molecular theory of water and aqueous solutions; phase transitions; glass physics; geometric aspects of packing problems; energy landscape analyses of condensed-matter phenomena; fundamental aspects of quantum chemistry; molecular models for spontaneous breaking of chiral symmetry and its application to pre-biotic chemistry.
    His current research activities include the structure and kinetics of metastable materials (especially glasses), the theoretical modeling of inverse melting phenomena, and molecular models for spontaneous breaking of chiral symmetry and its application to pre-biotic chemistry.

    Linear tunnel composed of stacked equilateral trivacancies in a hexagonal close-packed crystal of hard spheres.

    His past research activity has involved the molecular theory of water and aqueous solutions, the physical chemistry of solid and liquid surfaces, and atomic and molecular quantum theory. His discoveries include:

    • Critical point confluence phenomena (2018)
    • The perfect glass paradigm (2016)
    • Existence of maximally-disordered jammed packings of monodisperse hard disks (2014).
    • Microscopic model for chiral symmetry breaking (2010).
    • Diamond and wurtzite structures self-assemble with isotropic pair potentials (2007).
    • Statistical mechanical model for inverse melting (2003).
    • Kinetically diverse energy landscapes with identical thermodynamics (2002).
    • Convergence-limiting singularities in atomic and molecular quantum theory (2000).
    • Connection between spinodal curves and mechanical strength of glasses (1997)
    • Long-range broken symmetry in impurity-perturbed disk crystals (1995)
    • Resolution of the translation-rotation paradox in fragile glass formers (1993)
    • Planck's constant expansion for quantum mechanical bound states (1991)
    • Impossibility of "ideal" glass transitions in molecular liquids (1988)
    • Stillinger-Weber potential for silicon (1986)
    • Inverse Lindemann criterion for freezing of liquids (1985)
    • Inherent structure theory for liquids (1981)
    • Axiomatic basis for spaces with fractional dimension (1977)
    • Semiconductor heterostructures supporting bound states in the continuum (1977)
    • "Fast sound" in water (1974)
    • The Stillinger-Lovett second moment identity for electrolytes (1968)
    • Capillary wave theory for liquid interfaces (1965).


    What is the "energy landscape" formalism?

    Dr. Stillinger has created and exploited the novel approach to condensed-matter phenomena that has become widely known as the "energy landscape" formalism, a colloquial phrase that alludes to the vastly complicated multidimensional potential energy function for many-body systems. This general formalism encompasses equilibrium thermodynamics, irreversible processes, solid and fluid states of matter, and both quantum and classical dynamical systems. Its unconventional strategy has revealed many surprising results. One of the first was the fact that all liquids possess an underlying average "inherent structure" that exhibits enhanced short-range order. Furthermore the energy landscape formalism automatically supplies a novel freezing criterion for liquids that is a conceptual twin to the well-known Lindemann melting criterion for crystals. The natural division of the landscape space into geometrically precise "basins of attraction", each containing its own "inherent structure" minimum, leads to correspondingly precise definitions of metastable states of matter. In application to supercooled liquids and the glasses they form, the Stillinger approach has identified for the first time that the relevant portion of the potential energy landscape exhibits an anomalously rugged topography containing large "metabasin" features. The existence of these metabasins explains the appearance of distinct "alpha" and "beta" relaxation modes in strongly supercooled glass formers. Another important conclusion provided by the Stillinger formalism is that the popular hypothesis of an "ideal glass transition" at positive temperature is not possible for chemically or physically realistic interactions between atoms or molecules. The energy landscape representation and its emphasis on mechanically stable inherent structures leads to a clean identification of an intrinsic profile for liquid-vapor interfaces; this intrinsic profile construction for the first time excludes capillary wave fluctuations without artificial reliance on arbitrary parameters not present in the potential energy function. Subsequent to its introduction the landscape/inherent structure approach has been applied by many others to reveal new insights for gas-phase clusters, for thin films of a wide range of substances, and for the folding landscapes of polypeptides and proteins.

    European Patent: Density Enhancement Compositions

    Frank H. Stillinger was named as an inventor on European Patent EP 3117935, Density Enhancement Compositions, granted on October 30, 2024. The patent, assigned to The Trustees of Princeton University, lists Adam B. Hopkins, Salvatore Torquato, and Frank H. Stillinger as inventors.

    The invention concerns methods for designing mixtures of particles of different sizes so that smaller particles fill the voids between larger ones, producing unusually dense composite materials and powders. Such methods are useful in materials such as ceramics, cement, battery electrodes, and other particulate systems where high density is desirable.

    The European patent is part of a broader international patent family originating from a Princeton University invention disclosure and international patent application.

    Scientific Background

    The patent grew out of a sequence of theoretical investigations by Hopkins, Stillinger, Torquato, and collaborators on the geometry of dense particle packings. These studies examined the densest possible arrangements of spheres and mixtures of spheres and explored the structural diversity of dense packings.

    Understanding how particles pack together is important for predicting properties of granular and composite materials. The Princeton research program combined ideas from statistical mechanics, geometry, and materials science to determine how particle size distributions can be designed to produce very dense packings.

    Connection to Stillinger’s Research

    This work connects to several long-standing themes in Frank Stillinger’s research on many-particle systems.

    In his widely cited 1995 Science article, A Topographic View of Supercooled Liquids and Glass Formation, Stillinger introduced the energy-landscape framework for understanding complex condensed-matter systems. In this framework the behavior of liquids, glasses, and other disordered materials can be understood in terms of a landscape of potential-energy minima known as “inherent structures.”

    Earlier in his career, Stillinger also co-developed the Stillinger–Weber potential for silicon, introduced in the 1985 paper Computer simulation of local order in condensed phases of silicon with Thomas A. Weber. That model remains one of the most widely used interatomic potentials for simulations of silicon and related materials.

    Stillinger also co-authored influential work with Salvatore Torquato on hyperuniform disordered systems, which revealed unexpected forms of hidden order in apparently random materials.

    Selected References

    1. European Patent EP3117935. Density Enhancement Compositions. Inventors: Adam B. Hopkins, Salvatore Torquato, Frank H. Stillinger. Granted October 30, 2024. Assignee: The Trustees of Princeton University.
    2. Hopkins, A. B., Stillinger, F. H., & Torquato, S. (2011). Densest local sphere-packing diversity. II. Application to three dimensions. Physical Review E 83, 011304.
    3. Hopkins, A. B., Jiao, Y., Stillinger, F. H., & Torquato, S. (2011). Phase diagram and structural diversity of the densest binary sphere packings. Physical Review Letters 107, 125501.
    4. Stillinger, F. H. (1995). A Topographic View of Supercooled Liquids and Glass Formation. Science 267, 1935–1939.
    5. Stillinger, F. H., & Weber, T. A. (1985). Computer simulation of local order in condensed phases of silicon. Physical Review B 31, 5262–5271.
    6. Torquato, S., & Stillinger, F. H. (2003). Local density fluctuations, hyperuniformity, and order metrics. Physical Review E 68, 041113.


    A permanent archival copy of this website is preserved at

    - Internet Archive
    https://https://archive.org/details/@frank_stillinger

    - Zenodo
    DOI 10.5281/zenodo.18211425 (this is the universal DOI)
    https://zenodo.org/records/18211425

    fhstillinger@gmail.com
    === Last updated 3-20-2026 ===