(School: 30 Jan - 5 Feb 2012 at JNCASR)(Symposium: 6 - 8 Feb 2012 at NCBS)It has become increasingly clear in recent years that the concept of a ‘material’ goes well beyond its origins in hard condensed matter or materials science. Functional materials, such as shape memory alloys, show complex multiscale patterns of elastic domain walls. Glassy and driven materials involve nonequilibrium states of matter that go beyond conventional thermodynamics. Granular materials show stress propagation along force chains, jamming and intriguing connections with the physics of amorphous solids. Living cells and tissues are active materials displaying unique mechanical properties in their steady state, and in their response to stresses.The presently distinct fields of condensed matter physics, materials science, biological physics, and statistical mechanics, have close foundational links, and James A Krumhansl (1919-2004) had long advocated dissolving intellectual phase separations between them. In ...
