Education
Cvitanović earned his Bachelor of Surgery from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1969 and his Doctor of Philosophy at Cornell University in 1973.
Cvitanović earned his Bachelor of Surgery from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1969 and his Doctor of Philosophy at Cornell University in 1973.
Before joining the physics department at the Georgia Institute of Technology he was the director of the Center for Chaos and Turbulence Studies of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen. Perhaps his best-known work is his introduction of cycle expansions—that is, expansions based on using periodic orbit theory—to approximate chaotic dynamics in a controlled perturbative way. This technique has proven to be widely useful for diagnosing and quantifying chaotic dynamics in problems ranging from atomic physics to neurophysiology.
Cvitanović is a member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, a corresponding member of Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, a recipient of the Research Prize of the Danish Physical Society, and a fellow of the American Physical Society.