Which professor emeritus of Mathematics and statistical mechanics at California State University was also a contributor to The Panda's Thumb? Mark Perakh
Mark Perakh
Title: The Panda's Thumb (blog)
Passage: The Panda's Thumb is a weblog on the creation-evolution controversy from a mainstream scientific perspective.  In 2006, "Nature" listed it as one of the top five science blogs.  It is written by multiple contributors, including Wesley R. Elsberry, Paul R. Gross, Nick Matzke, PZ Myers and Mark Perakh, many of whom also have complementary weblogs at ScienceBlogs.  The blog takes its name from The Panda's Thumb, the pub of the virtual University of Ediacara, which is named after the by Stephen Jay Gould, which in turn takes its title from the essay "The Panda's Peculiar Thumb", which discusses the Panda's sesamoid bone, an example of convergent evolution.
Title: Henri Bacry
Passage: Henri Bacry (1928–2010) was Professor Emeritus at the Université de la Méditerranée.  Henri Bacry was assistant of physics at the Faculté des Sciences d'Alger and then Professor of mathematics at Lycée Bugeaud, before becoming, in 1969, Professor at the Faculté des Sciences de Luminy.  He was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in 1966-6 and a researcher at CERN.  He is the founder in 1972 of the International Colloquium of Group Theoretical Methods in Physics.  He has numerous publications on theoretical physics, problems of symmetry in various fields ranging from relativity to particle physics, optics, physics of sound and statistical mechanics and some work in mathematics.
Title: Richard B. Frankel
Passage: Richard B. Frankel is an "Emeritus" Professor of Physics at the California State Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo.  He is noted for his research on magnetotaxis and biomineralization of magnetic iron minerals in general and magnetotactic bacteria in particular.  His expertise in the latter was prominently discussed in Stephen Jay Gould's "The Panda's Thumb" (1980 Chapter 30).  He is a graduate of the University of Missouri (1961) and took a PhD from Berkeley (1965).  Much of his career was spent at the Francis Bitter National Magnet Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology before joining Cal Poly in 1988.
Title: Mark Perakh
Passage: Mark Perakh (Russian: Марк Пэрах ; "perach" (פֶּ֫רַח) is the Hebrew word for "flower"; born "Mark Yakovlevich Popereka" in 1924, Kiev, Ukraine, died 7 May 2013 in Escondido, California), was a professor emeritus of Mathematics and statistical mechanics at California State University, Fullerton in Fullerton, California.
Title: Alexandre Chorin
Passage: Alexandre Joel Chorin (born 25 June 1938) is a University Professor at the University of California, a Professor of Mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley and a Senior Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.  He is known for his contributions to computational fluid mechanics, turbulence, and computational statistical mechanics.
Title: Ron Purcell
Passage: "Ronald Charles Purcell" (October 5, 1932 – September 7, 2011) was an American guitarist, with degrees from the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music, California State University, Northridge.  He was Professor Emeritus of the Department of Music at California State University, Northridge and Director of the International Guitar Research Archive.  His major teachers included Andrés Segovia, Emilio Pujol, Macario Santiago Kastner, Alirio Diaz and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, whose "Hommage to Purcell", Op. 170, No. 38 is dedicated to him.
Title: Benjamin Widom
Passage: Benjamin Widom is the Goldwin Smith Professor of Chemistry at Cornell University.  His research interests include physical chemistry and statistical mechanics.  In 1998, Widom was awarded the Boltzmann Medal "for his illuminating studies of the statistical mechanics of fluids and fluid mixtures and their interfacial properties, especially his clear and general formulation of scaling hypotheses for the equation of state and surface tensions of fluids near critical points."  Widom is father to Michael Widom, a professor of physics at Carnegie Mellon University, Elizabeth Widom, a professor of geology at Miami University, and the late Jonathan Widom, a professor of biochemistry at Northwestern University.
Title: E.G.D. Cohen
Passage: Ezechiel Godert David "Eddie" Cohen (born January 16, 1923– September 24, 2017) was a Dutch-American physicist and Professor Emeritus at The Rockefeller University.  He is widely recognised for his contributions to statistical physics.  In 2004 Cohen was awarded the Boltzmann Medal, the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for his field, jointly with Prof. H. Eugene Stanley.  Cohen's citation read "For his fundamental contributions to nonequilibrium statistical mechanics, including the development of a theory of transport phenomena in dense gases, and the characterization of measures and fluctuations in nonequilibrium stationary states."
Title: Thomas Spencer (mathematical physicist)
Passage: Thomas C. Spencer (born December 24, 1946) is an American mathematical physicist, known in particular for important contributions to constructive quantum field theory, statistical mechanics, and spectral theory of random operators.  He earned his doctorate in 1972 from New York University with a dissertation entitled "Perturbation of the Po2 Quantum Field Hamiltonian" written under the direction of James Glimm.  Since 1986, he has been professor of mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study.  He is a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences, and the recipient of the Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics (joint with Jürg Fröhlich, ""For their joint work in providing rigorous mathematical solutions to some outstanding problems in statistical mechanics and field theory."") .
Title: Philip G. Hodge
Passage: Philip Gibson Hodge, Jr. (November 9, 1920 – November 11, 2014) was an American engineer who specialized in mechanics of elastic and plastic behavior of materials.  His work resulted in significant advancements in plasticity theory including developments in the method of characteristics, limit-analysis, piecewise linear isotropic plasticity, and nonlinear programming applications.  Dr. Hodge was the Technical Editor of American Society of Mechanical Engineers Journal of Applied Mechanics from 1971-1976.  From 1984 to 2000 he was the Secretary of the U. S. National Committee on Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, its longest serving Secretary.  In 1949 he became Assistant Professor of Mathematics at UCLA, then moved on to become Associate Professor of Applied Mechanics at Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn in 1953, Professor of Mechanics at Illinois Institute of Technology (Chicago) in 1957, and Professor of Mechanics at the University of Minnesota in 1971, where he remained until he retired in 1991.  After retirement he was Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota and Visiting Professor Emeritus at Stanford University.
The Panda's Thumb (blog) Mark Perakh