History of the Lenz-Ising model 1965--1971: the role of a simple model in understanding critical phenomena (Q666267)

The author presented his third and last part of a series of papers on the history of the Lenz-Ising model, it covers the time from 1965-1971. In this time a new understanding of phase transitions was developed: critical phenomena were now realised as a research field of its own. In the following the author focuses on the two questions: What kinds of insight into critical phenomena was the employment of the Lenz-Ising model thought to give? And how could the model provide a better understanding? The author especially explained the role of the model in explaining scaling and in a theory of critical phenomena. The hypothesis of the universality of the Lenz-Ising model was first and independently proncounced by Kadanoff and Griffiths; they divided critical phenomena into classes with similar critical behaviour. The contribution ends with the following remark: ``The history of the Lenz-Ising model from 1920 to 1970 is thus the story of a model that went from relative obscurity to a prominent position in understanding critical phenomena, and how this became possible by a profound change in its epistemology.''