Nevill Francis Mott

Nevill Francis Mott
Born	30 September 1905(1905-09-30) Leeds, England
Died	8 August 1996(1996-08-08) (aged 90) Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, England
Nationality	United Kingdom
Fields	Physics
Institutions	University of Manchester Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge University of Bristol
Alma mater	St John's College, Cambridge
Notable awards	Nobel Prize in Physics (1977)

Sir Nevill Francis Mott, CH, FRS (30 September 1905 – 8 August 1996) was an English physicist. He won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1977 for his work on the electronic structure of magnetic and disordered systems, especially amorphous semiconductors. The award was shared with Philip W. Anderson and J. H. Van Vleck, who had pursued independent research.

Biography

Early years

Mott was born in Leeds to Lilian Mary Reynolds and Charles Francis Mott and grew up first in the village of Giggleswick, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, where his father was Senior Science Master at the local school. The family moved (due to his father's jobs) first to Staffordshire, then to Chester and finally Liverpool, where his father had been appointed Director of Education. Mott was at first educated at home by his mother, who was a Cambridge Mathematics Tripos graduate. His parents met in the Cavendish Laboratory, when both were engaged in physics research. At age ten, he began formal education at Clifton College in Bristol, then at St. John's College, Cambridge, where he read the Mathematics Tripos.

Career

Mott was appointed to a lecturership at the University of Manchester in 1929. He returned to Cambridge in 1930 as a Fellow and lecturer of Gonville and Caius College and in 1933 moved to the University of Bristol as Melville Wills Professor in Theoretical Physics.

In 1948 he became Henry Overton Wills Professor of Physics and Director of the Henry Herbert Wills Physical Laboratory at Bristol. In 1954 he was appointed Cavendish Professor of Physics at Cambridge, a post he held until 1971. Additionally he served as Master of Gonville and Caius College, 1959-1966.

Mott's accomplishments include explaining theoretically the effect of light on a photographic emulsion (see latent image) and outlining the transition of substances from metallic to nonmetallic states (Mott transition). The term Mott insulator is also named for him. He introduced Mott polynomials.

Mott was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1936. Mott served as president of the Physical Society in 1957. In the early 1960s he was chairman of the British Pugwash group. He was knighted in 1962.[1] He continued to work until he was about ninety. He was made a Companion of Honour in 1995.

Personal life

Mott was married to Ruth Eleanor Horder, and had two daughters, Elizabeth and Alice. He died in Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire.

Bibliography

• N. F. Mott, Metal-Insulator Transitions, second edition (Taylor & Francis, London, 1990). ISBN 0850667836, ISBN 978-0850667837
• N. F. Mott, A Life in Science, (Taylor & Francis, London, 1986). ISBN 0850663334, ISBN 978-0850663334
• Brian Pippard, Nevill Francis Mott, Physics Today, March 1997, pp. 95 and 96: (pdf).

External links

• Delightful BBC video of 1985 interview with Nevill Mott (accessed Oct 8, 2010)
• Nobel lecture (PDF)
• Sir Nevill Francis Mott
• Mott's memories University of Bristol (accessed Jan 2006)
• National Cataloguing Unit for the Archives of Contemporary Scientists Bath University