Basic Notions of Condensed Matter Physics

Philip Anderson was the son and grandson of Midwestern science professors. After serving in World War II as an engineer at the Naval Research Laboratory, he received a Ph.D. in physics from Harvard University in 1949. In 1961 and 1962, as a visiting professor at Churchill College of Cambridge University, Anderson made early contributions to experimental research in superconductivity. He confirmed the theoretical predictions made by Brian David Josephson, for which Josephson was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1973. In 1977, Anderson shared the Nobel Prize for physics with Mott and Van Vleck.

Although he is respected as an experimenter and researcher, Anderson's colleagues noted that his major strength is his intuitive ability to formulate concepts. For example, Anderson has shown by models how electrons move and interact in disordered materials that lack a uniform crystalline structure.

Anderson retired from the directorship at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, in 1984 and presently teaches at Princeton University.

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