Authored by world-leading physicists, this introductory textbook explores the basic principles of polymers, colloids, liquid crystals, wetting, and foams. It is a practical 'toolbox' for undergraduate students in physics, biology, and the medical sciences to learn the basics of soft matter physics.

1.Introduction. 2. Soft Matter. 3. Phase Transitions. 4. Interfaces. 5. Liquid Crystals. 6. Surfactants. 7. Polymers. 8. Soft Matter in Everyday Life. 9. Soft Matter Technology. 10. Soft Matter in Biology. 11. Conclusion.

Françoise Brochard-Wyart is a French theoretical physicist. She was born in 1944 in Saint-Étienne in France. Currently she is a professor of theoretical soft matter physics at the Curie Institute. She studied at École Normale Supérieure de Cachan from 1964 to 1968 and obtained a degree in physics. Following her degree she studied for a PhD in Liquid Crystals under the supervision of Pierre-Gilles De Gennes. She obtained her PhD in 1974. Following her PhD she went on to study the dynamics of polymers at the Collège de France. In 1986 she was made a professor of physical chemistry at Pierre-and-Marie-Curie University. Here she focused her research on phenomena involving mixing and on the physics of interfaces. In 1991 she joined the Curie Institute and began research on biophysics. She is a member of Institut Universitaire de France. She was awarded the Jean Ricard Prize from the French Physical Society in 1998.

Pierre Nassoy is an experimentalist physicist. He was born in 1968 in Thionville in France. Currently, he is a CNRS senior scientist at the Institut d'Optique d'Aquitaine in Bordeaux. He studied at Ecole Supérieure de Physique et Chimie Industrielles de Paris (ESPCI) and obtained an engineering diploma. Then he obtained a PhD in 1996 in Monomolecular Langmuir Films under the supervision of Francis Rondelez. He then did a postdoc in biophysics in Vancouver, Canada (advisor: Evan Evans). He was junior CNRS scientist interested in cell biophysics at the Institut Curie until 2012.

Pierre-Henri Puech is a researcher at LAI Lab, Marseille, France. His research interests centre around soft condensed matter and biophysics; particularly T cell recognition, mechanics, and signalling in addition to toxoplasma mechanics and adhesion and mechanics in cancer.