  Electrostatic correlations play an important role in physics, chemistry and
biology. In plasmas they lead to thermodynamic instability similar to the
liquid-gas phase transition of simple molecular fluids. For charged colloidal
suspensions the electrostatic correlations are responsible for screening and
colloidal charge renormalization. In aqueous solutions containing multivalent
counterions they can lead to charge inversion and flocculation. In biological
systems the correlations account for the organization of cytoskeleton and the
compaction of genetic material. In spite of their ubiquity, the true importance
of electrostatic correlations has become fully appreciated only quite recently.
In this paper, I will review the thermodynamic consequences of electrostatic
correlations in a variety of systems ranging from classical plasmas to
molecular biology.
