Randall David Kamien (born February 25, 1966)^{[citation needed]} is a theoretical condensed matter physicist specializing in the physics of liquid crystals and is the Vicki and William Abrams Professor in the Natural Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania.^[1]

Randall Kamien was born to economist Morton Kamien and Lenore Kamien on February 25, 1966, and grew up in Wilmette, Illinois on the outskirts of Chicago.^[2] Kamien completed a B.S. and a M.S. in physics at the California Institute of Technology in 1988 and completed a PhD in physics at Harvard University in 1992 under the supervision of David R. Nelson.^[3] Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania he was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Pennsylvania. Kamien was appointed assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania in 1997 and promoted to full professor in 2003.^[4] Kamien is a fellow of the American Physics Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.^[4] Kamien is the editor of Reviews of Modern Physics.^[5]

Randall Kamien studies soft condensed matter – and in particular liquid crystalline phases of matter – through the lens of geometry and topology.^[6] In particular, Kamien has contributed to understanding Twist Grain Boundaries,^[7] Focal Conic Domains,^[8] and defect topology in smectic liquid crystals.^[9] He is also known for his idiosyncratic naming conventions, such as “Shnerk’s Surface” ^[10] and “Shmessel Functions.”

• Senyuk, B.; Liu, Q.; He, S.; Kamien, R. D.; Kusner, R. B.; Lubensky, T. C.; Smalyukh, I. I. (2013), "Topological colloids", Nature, 493 (7431): 200–205, arXiv:1612.08753, Bibcode:2013Natur.493..200S, doi:10.1038/nature11710, PMID 23263182, S2CID 4343186.
• Honglawan, A.; Beller, D. A.; Cavallaro, M.; Kamien, R. D.; Stebe, K. J.; Yang, S. (2013), "Topographically induced hierarchical assembly and geometrical transformation of focal conic domain arrays in smectic liquid crystals", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110 (1): 34–39, doi:10.1073/pnas.1214708109, PMC 3538202, PMID 23213240.
• Snir, Y.; Kamien, R. D. (2005), "Entropically driven helix formation", Science, 307 (5712): 1067, arXiv:cond-mat/0502520, doi:10.1126/science.1106243, PMID 15718461, S2CID 14611285.
• Ziherl, P.; Kamien, R. D. (2001), "Maximizing entropy by minimizing area: Towards a new principle of self-organization", The Journal of Physical Chemistry B, 105 (42): 10147, arXiv:cond-mat/0103171, doi:10.1021/jp010944q, S2CID 119467204.
• Kamien, R. D.; Selinger, J. V. (2001), "Order and frustration in chiral liquid crystals", Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter, 13 (3): R1, arXiv:cond-mat/0009094, doi:10.1088/0953-8984/13/3/201, S2CID 93442372.
• Kamien, R. D.; Lubensky, T. C. (1999), "Minimal surfaces, screw dislocations, and twist grain boundaries", Physical Review Letters, 82 (14): 2892, arXiv:cond-mat/9808306, Bibcode:1999PhRvL..82.2892K, doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.82.2892, S2CID 15354995.