Philip W. Anderson

American physicist
Also known as: Philip Warren Anderson
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In full:
Philip Warren Anderson
Born:
December 13, 1923, Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S.
Died:
March 29, 2020, Princeton, New Jersey (aged 96)

Philip W. Anderson (born December 13, 1923, Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S.—died March 29, 2020, Princeton, New Jersey) was an American physicist and corecipient, with John H. Van Vleck and Nevill F. Mott, of the 1977 Nobel Prize for Physics for his research on semiconductors, superconductivity, and magnetism.

Educated at Harvard University, Anderson received his doctorate in 1949. From 1949 to 1984 he worked at Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. From 1967 to 1975 he was professor of theoretical physics at the University of Cambridge, and in 1975 he began teaching at Princeton University, where he later became professor emeritus. His research in solid-state physics made possible the development of inexpensive electronic switching and memory devices in computers. In 1982 he was awarded the National Medal of Science.

His writings included Concepts of Solids (1963) and Basic Notions of Condensed Matter Physics (1984). Anderson was a certified first degree–master of the Japanese board game go.

Italian-born physicist Dr. Enrico Fermi draws a diagram at a blackboard with mathematical equations. circa 1950.
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condensed-matter physics, discipline that treats the thermal, elastic, electrical, magnetic, and optical properties of solid and liquid substances. Condensed-matter physics grew at an explosive rate during the second half of the 20th century, and it has scored numerous important scientific and technical achievements, including the transistor.

Among solid materials, the greatest theoretical advances have been in the study of crystalline materials whose simple repetitive geometric arrays of atoms are multiple-particle systems that allow treatment by quantum mechanics. Because the atoms in a solid are coordinated with each other over large distances, the theory must go beyond that appropriate for atoms and molecules. Thus conductors, such as metals, contain some so-called free (or conduction) electrons, which are responsible for the electrical and most of the thermal conductivity of the material and which belong collectively to the whole solid rather than to individual atoms. Semiconductors and insulators, either crystalline or amorphous, are other materials studied in this field of physics.

Other aspects of condensed matter involve the properties of the ordinary liquid state, of liquid crystals, and, at temperatures near absolute zero (−273.15 °C, or −459.67 °F), of the so-called quantum liquids. The latter exhibit a property known as superfluidity (completely frictionless flow), which is an example of macroscopic quantum phenomena. Such phenomena are also exemplified by superconductivity (completely resistance-less flow of electricity), a low-temperature property of certain metallic and ceramic materials. Besides their significance to technology, macroscopic liquid and solid quantum states are important in astrophysical theories of stellar structure in, for example, neutron stars.

Bernoulli model of gas pressure
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