Apr 26, 2007 -- Have you ever wondered why the foam on a pint of Guinness lingers while the foam on a pint of lager rapidly dissolves? It turns out the answer is so complicated that for more than half a century, no one has made significant headway in understanding it--until now. David Srolovitz, PhD, dean of Yeshiva College and professor of physics at Yeshiva University, and Robert MacPherson, PhD, professor of mathematics at the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ, recently revamped the famous von Neumann Relation, a formula that predicts the growth and shrinkage of individual bubbles in foam and crystalline grains in metals, semiconductors, and other materials. Their findings—which are being published in the April 26th issue of Nature, the most prestigious science magazine in the world—could be used to build better airplane wings, nuclear reactors, microprocessors, and of course, heads of beer. The research has garnered media attention from Reuters, Scientific American, and New Scientist. Dr. Srolovitz describes the original equation as “stunningly beautiful and simple,” predicting how two-dimensional shapes change over time. But the world of science could make no progress in the three-dimensional world over the last half century. The new equation works in two dimensions, three dimensions or any number of dimensions, vastly expanding the areas to which it can be applied. “This is one of those rare occasions where some really beautiful, pure mathematics could be applied to an important problem in the sciences wholesale,” says Dr. Srolovitz. Why has it taken so long to move from 2-D to 3-D? After John von Nuemann developed the formula in 1952, both the materials science community and the mathematics community possessed the tools to advance his ideas. According to Dr. MacPherson, the problem was that scientists and pure mathematicians rarely communicate well with each other. That changed when mathematician Dr. MacPherson—after hearing that materials science poses some great geometry problems—attended one of Dr. Srolovitz’s lectures at Princeton University (where YC’s new dean was chair of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering until moving to Yeshiva University last May). The two researchers decided to collaborate and discovered an abstract, mathematical approach to solving one of science’s most practical problems.