About Alan Sokal
Alan David Sokal ( SOH-kəl; born January 24, 1955) is an American professor of mathematics at University College London and professor emeritus of physics at New York University. He works with statistical mechanics and combinatorics. Sokal is a critic of postmodernism, and caused the Sokal affair in 1996 when his deliberately nonsensical paper was published by Duke University Press's Social Text. He also co-authored a paper criticizing the critical positivity ratio concept in positive psychology. == Early life and academic career == Sokal was born to Nathan O. Sokal (1929–2016), an electrical engineer of Polish descent, and Zelda Kaufman Sokal. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard College in 1976 and his PhD from Princeton University in 1981. He was advised by the physicist Arthur Wightman. During the summers of 1986, 1987, and 1988, Sokal taught mathematics at the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua, when the Sandinistas controlled the elected government. == Research interests == Sokal's research involves mathematical physics and combinatorics. In particular, he studies the interplay between these topics based on questions concerning statistical mechanics and quantum field theory.
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