Brézin was born in Paris, France, to agnostic Jewish parents from Poland. His father served in the French army during World War II and was taken prisoner by the Germans in 1940, but escaped, The family used false names and Brézin was hidden by farmers.[1][2]
Brezin contributed to the field of physics that deals with the macroscopic physical properties of matter and high energy physics. He was a leader in critical behavior theory and developed methods for distilling testable predictions for critical exponents. In using field theoretic techniques in the study of condensed matter, Brezin helped further modern theories of magnetism and the quantum Hall effect.
Edouard Brezin's work is devoted to quantum field theory, mainly for applications in statistical physics.[7] It uses the theoretical formulation of the renormalization group for critical phenomena (equation of states, scaling corrections, etc.). He showed that the low temperature phase, in the case of a continuous symmetry break, is described by a non-linear sigma model, leading to a development of critical exponents in powers of the minus two space dimension. He showed that the instantaneous method can be used to characterize the asymptotic behaviour of perturbation theory, thus allowing accurate theoretical estimates to be made.[8] He has applied field theory techniques to condensed matter problems, such as critical wetting theory or the study of the phase transition from a normal metal to a type II superconductor under magnetic field. He became interested in theories of gauging with a large number of colors. This led to a representation of two-dimensional quantum gravity by random fluctuating surfaces or closed bosonic strings, in terms of random matrices.[9] He showed that the continuous boundary of such models is linked to integrable hierarchies such as KdV flows. He has also worked on establishing the universality of eigenvalue correlations for random matrices.[10]
Brézin, E.; Wallace, D. J.; Wilson, Kenneth G. (1972-08-28). "Feynman-Graph Expansion for the Equation of State near the Critical Point (Ising-like Case)". Physical Review Letters. 29 (9). American Physical Society (APS): 591–594. Bibcode:1972PhRvL..29..591B. doi:10.1103/physrevlett.29.591. ISSN0031-9007.
Brezin, E.; Le Guillou, J. C.; Zinn-Justin, J. (1973-07-15). "Wilson's Theory of Critical Phenomena and Callan-Symanzik Equations in 4−ε Dimensions". Physical Review D. 8 (2). American Physical Society (APS): 434–440. Bibcode:1973PhRvD...8..434B. doi:10.1103/physrevd.8.434. ISSN0556-2821.
Brézin, E.; Zinn-Justin, J. (1976-03-29). "Renormalization of the NonlinearσModel in 2+ε Dimensions—Application to the Heisenberg Ferromagnets". Physical Review Letters. 36 (13). American Physical Society (APS): 691–694. doi:10.1103/physrevlett.36.691. ISSN0031-9007.
^Brezin, Edouard; Wadia, Spenta R, eds. (1993). The Large N expansion in quantum field theory and statistical physics : from spin systems to 2-dimensional gravity. Singapore: World Scientific. ISBN978-9810204563.
^Champs, cordes et phénomènes critiques = Fields, strings and critical phenomena : Les Houches, session XLIX, 28 juin -5 août 1988. North-Holland. 1990. ISBN9780444884404.
^Brézin, E. (2016). Random matrix theory with an external source. Singapore: Springer. ISBN978-981-10-3316-2.