This is an extended version of my Nobel Lecture, delivered on December 8, 2021. I will
recall the genesis of the concept of multiple equilibria in natural sciences. I will then describe …

Although the atomic structure of amorphous alloys, which lacks long-range translational
symmetry, may appear homogeneous at the macroscopic scale, their local dynamic and/or …

Classical dynamical density functional theory (DDFT) is one of the cornerstones of modern
statistical mechanics. It is an extension of the highly successful method of classical density …

Recent years witnessed the development of powerful generative models based on flows,
diffusion, or autoregressive neural networks, achieving remarkable success in generating …

Many questions of fundamental interest in today's science can be formulated as inference
problems: some partial, or noisy, observations are performed over a set of variables and the …

A theoretical perspective is provided on the glass transition in molecular liquids at thermal
equilibrium, on the spatially heterogeneous and aging dynamics of disordered materials …

Glasses are amorphous solids whose constituent particles are caged by their neighbours
and thus cannot flow. This sluggishness is often ascribed to the free energy landscape …

Despite decades of work, gaining a first-principles understanding of amorphous materials
remains an extremely challenging problem. However, recent theoretical breakthroughs have …

Understanding the physics of glass formation remains one of the major unsolved challenges
of condensed matter science. As a material solidifies into a glass, it exhibits a spectacular …

When we lower the temperature of a liquid, at some point we meet a first order phase
transition to the crystal. Yet, under certain conditions it is possible to keep the system in its …