Comprehensive Quantum Physics

Professor Robert Mann has had a long and distinguished career as a professor of Physics at the University of Waterloo, where he is now a Distinguished University Professor Emeritus. Professor Mann has been a prolific scientific contributor with over 650 peer-reviewed articles, 2 books, over 42,000 citations on Google Scholar with an h-index of 98. His contributions to gravitational physics include the development of the quasilocal formalism of black hole thermodynamics, pioneering the gravitational counterterm formalism in the AdS/CFT correspondence, and establishing some basic results in the tunnelling formalism for computing Hawking radiation. He developed a new sub-discipline of black hole thermodynamics now known as “Black Hole Chemistry”, that demonstrated how black holes exhibit a range of thermodynamic phenomena observed in chemistry laboratories on Earth. He established another sub-field, now known as “Relativistic Quantum Information (RQI)” that combines the tools of quantum information theory with those of relativistic physics. He also introduced a generalized uncertainty principle into quantum physics, an approach that formed a paradigm employed by researchers worldwide for calculations in a broad range of areas, including early universe cosmology, black hole physics, quantum optics, atomic physics and condensed matter physics. Professor Mann’s service record includes a long history of positions with the Canadian Association of Physicists (CAP), which culminated in him becoming CAP president in 2010. He has served on several journal editorial boards, including Symmetry, Classical and Quantum Gravity, and the International Journal of Modern Physics, was the Editor in Chief of the Canadian Journal of Physics and became Executive Editor in Chief at Canadian Science Publishing in 2023. He served two years as Director of the Guelph-Waterloo Physics Institute and seven years as Chair of the Department of Physics & Astronomy, as well as a broad range of university committees at the Senate, Faculty, and Department levels. He was awarded the Distinguished Teaching Award at Waterloo in 2010 and the 2019 Medal of Excellence in Physics Teaching by the CAP. He shared the Dragomir Hurmuzescu Prize of the Romanian Academy of Science for his work on Quantum Foundations. He won the UW President’s Merit Award 3 times, and in 2022 was award the honour of University Professor, the highest distinction possible at the University of Waterloo. In 2024 he was recognized as a fellow of the Canadian Association of Physicists. In 2026 he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.