Scott Milner, the William H. Joyce Chair Professor of Chemical Engineering, was awarded the Polymer Physics Prize by the American Physics Society. Credit: Poornima Tomy/Penn State
Scott Milner awarded Polymer Physics Prize by American Physics Society
Feb 5, 2025
By Mariah Lucas
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Scott Milner, the William H. Joyce Chair Professor of Chemical Engineering in the Penn State College of Engineering, was selected to receive the 2025 Polymer Physics Prize by the American Physics Society (APS). The award recognizes outstanding accomplishment and excellence of contributions in polymer physics research and comes with a $10,000 prize. Milner will receive the award during this year’s March APS meeting, which will include a session of invited talks by his colleagues and collaborators.
“Scott was selected from an international community of physicists to receive this prestigious award, and it honors his indelible contributions to the field,” said Phil Savage, Walter L. Robb Family Chair and head of the Department of Chemical Engineering. “We are lucky to have him at Penn State where, in addition to his research contributions, he shares his knowledge and expertise with the next generation of engineers and researchers.”
Milner’s research centers on the microscopic understanding of the material properties of polymers and complex fluids. He was recognized by the APS for his contributions to the theory of polymer brushes, copolymers, molecular entanglement rheology, interaction parameter estimation and polymer crystallization.
Polymers are flexible long-chain molecules, which can adopt many conformations depending on their environment and surroundings, Milner explained, while polymer brushes form when long-chain molecules are attached by one end to a substrate and crowded together. Milner helped develop theories of how chains in brushes arrange themselves in response to severe crowding by their neighbors.
“Molecular entanglement rheology” refers to the ways that melts and solutions of long flexible chains flow, Milner explained. He worked on early microscopic theories of how stress relaxes in branched polymer melts, which formed the basis for more complete models that are widely used in physics today. He also contributed to understanding the entanglement of different kinds of polymer chains, which controls how they flow.
Polymer scientists quantify the tendency of polymers to separate through interaction parameters, Milner explained. Long polymers separate easily because weak local repulsions add up over the entire length of a chain. Milner developed ways to measure the strength of a polymer interaction through atomistic computer simulations, which visualize how a real polymer melt might behave.
“I am delighted to have been recognized with this award by the polymer physics community,” Milner said. “I very much enjoy my work as a polymer theorist and am grateful to have worked with many excellent collaborators and students. When I sought to move to academia from industry, the chemical engineering department placed a considerable bet on me; although I had been quite successful in research, I had never taught a class, written a grant or advised a graduate student. Coming to Penn State, I benefited from energetic colleagues and excellent graduate students, who were essential in bringing my research plans to fruition. Without them, much of what I have accomplished here would have remained daydreams, or would never have been dreamt at all.”
After earning a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and physics from Vanderbilt University and a doctorate in theoretical condensed-matter physics from Harvard University, Milner held postdoctoral positions at Exxon and AT&T Bell Labs. He then served as a research physicist at ExxonMobil from 1989 to 2008 before joining Penn State in 2008.
In 1994, Milner was awarded the APS John H. Dillon Medal for his work on polymer brushes, copolymer mesophase ordering and effects of flow on polymer solutions, and became an APS fellow in 2003. He served on the executive committee of the APS Division of Polymer Physics from 1999-2003 and as division councilor from 2006-2012.
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