American physicist (1931?2019)
John Robert Schrieffer
(
; May 31, 1931 ? July 27, 2019)
[1]
was an American physicist who, with
John Bardeen
and
Leon Cooper
, was a recipient of the 1972
Nobel Prize in Physics
for developing the
BCS theory
, the first successful quantum theory of
superconductivity
.
Life and career
[
edit
]
Schrieffer was born in
Oak Park, Illinois
, the son of Louise (Anderson) and John Henry Schrieffer.
[2]
His family moved in 1940 to
Manhasset, New York
, and then in 1947 to
Eustis, Florida
, where his father, a former pharmaceutical salesman, began a career in the citrus industry. In his Florida days, Schrieffer enjoyed playing with homemade rockets and ham radio, a hobby that sparked an interest in electrical engineering.
After graduating from
Eustis High School
in 1949, Schrieffer was admitted to the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
, where for two years he majored in electrical engineering before switching to physics in his junior year. He completed a bachelor's thesis on multiplets in heavy atoms under the direction of
John C. Slater
in 1953. Pursuing an interest in solid-state physics, Schrieffer began graduate studies at the
University of Illinois at Urbana?Champaign
, where he was hired immediately as a research assistant to Bardeen. After working out a theoretical problem of electrical conduction on semiconductor surfaces, Schrieffer spent a year in the laboratory, applying the theory to several surface problems. In his third year of graduate studies, he joined Bardeen and Cooper in developing the theory of superconductivity.
Schrieffer recalled that in January 1957 he was on a subway in New York City when he had an idea of how to describe mathematically the ground state of superconducting electrons. Schrieffer and Bardeen's collaborator Cooper had discovered that electrons in a superconductor are grouped in pairs, now called
Cooper pairs
, and that the motions of all Cooper pairs within a single superconductor are correlated and function as a single entity due to phonon-electron interactions. Schrieffer's mathematical breakthrough was to describe the behavior of all Cooper pairs at the same time, instead of each individual pair. The day after returning to Illinois, Schrieffer showed his equations to Bardeen, who immediately realized they were the solution to the problem. The BCS theory (Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer) of superconductivity, as it is now known, accounted for more than 30 years of experimental results that had stymied some of the greatest theorists in physics.
After completing his doctoral dissertation on the theory of superconductivity, Schrieffer spent the 1957?1958 academic year as a
National Science Foundation
fellow at the
University of Birmingham
in England and at the
Niels Bohr Institute
in Copenhagen, where he continued research into superconductivity. Following a year as assistant professor at the University of Chicago, he returned to the University of Illinois in 1959 as a faculty member. In 1960, he went back to the Bohr Institute for a summer visit, during which he became engaged to Anne Grete Thomsen whom he married at Christmas of that year. Two years later, Schrieffer joined the faculty of the
University of Pennsylvania
in
Philadelphia
, and, in 1964, Schrieffer published his book on the BCS theory, Theory of Superconductivity. He held honorary degrees from the
Technical University of Munich
and the
University of Geneva
. In 1968 Schrieffer, along with Cooper, were awarded the
Comstock Prize in Physics
from the
National Academy of Sciences
.
[3]
He was awarded the
Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize
by the
American Physical Society
the same year.
Schrieffer was elected to the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
in 1970 and the United States
National Academy of Sciences
in 1971.
[4]
[5]
In 1972, he, along with Bardeen and Cooper, won the 1972 Nobel Prize in Physics for developing the BCS theory. Schrieffer was elected to the
American Philosophical Society
in 1975.
[6]
In 1980, Schrieffer became a professor at the
University of California, Santa Barbara
, and rose to chancellor professor in 1984, serving as director of the university's
Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics
. In 1992,
Florida State University
appointed Schrieffer as a university eminent scholar professor and chief scientist of the
National High Magnetic Field Laboratory
, where he continued to pursue one of the great goals in physics: room temperature superconductivity.
On September 24, 2004, while driving with a suspended
license
, Schrieffer was involved in an automobile accident that killed one person and injured seven others.
[1]
Schrieffer was said to have fallen asleep at the wheel of his car. On November 6, 2005, he was sentenced to two years in
prison
for
vehicular manslaughter
. Schrieffer was incarcerated in
Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility
at Rock Mountain near
San Diego, California
.
[7]
He died in late July 2019 at a nursing facility in Florida while sleeping. He was 88 years old.
[1]
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
c
"Nobel Prize-Winning Physicist Schrieffer Dies in Florida"
. Associated Press. July 27, 2019
. Retrieved
August 11,
2019
.
- ^
"John Schrieffer"
.
MyHeritage
. Retrieved
August 4,
2019
.
John, Robert Schrieffer was born on month day 1931, at birth place, Illinois, to John, H. Schrieffer and Louise Schrieffer.
- ^
"J. Robert Schrieffer"
.
National Academy of Sciences
. June 19, 2019
. Retrieved
August 4,
2019
.
- ^
"John Robert Schrieffer"
.
American Academy of Arts & Sciences
. Retrieved
July 28,
2022
.
- ^
"J. Robert Schrieffer"
.
www.nasonline.org
. Retrieved
July 28,
2022
.
- ^
"APS Member History"
.
search.amphilsoc.org
. Retrieved
July 28,
2022
.
- ^
"Nobel Prize-Winning Physicist Gets Two Years in Prison for Deadly Crash"
.
The Associated Press
.
Fox News
. November 7, 2005
. Retrieved
July 28,
2019
.
External links
[
edit
]
- Robert Schrieffer
on Nobelprize.org
including the Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1972
Macroscopic Quantum Phenomena from Pairing in Superconductors
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