Philip W. Anderson

"P. W. Anderson" and "Philip W. Anderson" redirect here. For the film editor, see Philip W. Anderson (editor).

Philip Warren Anderson
Born	(1923-12-13) 13 December 1923 Indianapolis, Indiana, USA
Nationality	United States
Alma mater	Harvard University U.S. Naval Research Laboratory
Awards	Nobel Prize in Physics (1977)
Scientific career
Fields	Physics
Institutions	Bell Laboratories Princeton University Cambridge University
Doctoral advisor	John Hasbrouck van Vleck

Philip Warren Anderson (born December 13, 1923) is an American physicist and Nobel laureate. Anderson has made contributions to the theories of localization, antiferromagnetism and high-temperature superconductivity.

Biography

Anderson was born in Indianapolis, Indiana and grew up in Urbana, Illinois. He graduated from University Laboratory High School in Urbana in 1940. Afterwards, he went to Harvard University for undergraduate and graduate work, with a wartime stint at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in-between. In graduate school he studied under John Hasbrouck van Vleck.

From 1949 to 1984 he worked at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, where he worked on a wide variety of problems in condensed matter physics. During this period he discovered the concept of localization, the idea that extended states can be localized by the presence of disorder in a system; the Anderson Hamiltonian, which describes electrons in a transition metal; the "Higgs" mechanism for generating mass in elementary particles; and the pseudospin approach to the BCS theory of superconductivity.

From 1967 to 1975, Anderson was a professor of theoretical physics at Cambridge University. In 1977 Anderson was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his investigations into the electronic structure of magnetic and disordered systems, which allowed for the development of electronic switching and memory devices in computers. Co-researchers Sir Nevill Francis Mott and John van Vleck shared the award with him. In 1982, he was awarded the National Medal of Science. He retired from Bell Labs in 1984 and is currently Joseph Henry Professor of Physics at Princeton University.

Anderson's writings include Concepts of Solids, Basic Notions of Condensed Matter Physics and The Theory of Superconductivity in the High-Tc Cuprates. Anderson currently serves on the board of advisors of Scientists and Engineers for America, an organization focused on promoting sound science in American government. He is a certified first degree-master of the Chinese board game Go.

A 2006 statistical analysis of scientific research papers by José Soler, comparing number of references in a paper to the number of citations, declared Anderson to be the "most creative" physicist in the world.

Publications

• Anderson, P.W. (1958). "Absence of Diffusion in Certain Random Lattices". Phys. Rev. 109 (5). American Physical Society: 1492–1505. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.109.1492.
• Anderson, P.W. (1972). "Anomalous low-temperature thermal properties of glasses and spin glasses". Philosophical Magazine. 25 (1): 1–9. doi:10.1080/14786437208229210. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Anderson, P.W. (1972). "More is Different" (PDF). Science. 177 (4047): 393–396. doi:10.1126/science.177.4047.393. PMID 17796623.
• Anderson, P.W. (1987). "The resonating valence bond state in La₂CuO₄ and superconductivity". Science. 235 (4793): 1196–1198. doi:10.1126/science.235.4793.1196. PMID 17818979.
• Notes on Theory of Magnetism, Tokyo, 1954
• Concepts in Solids, 1963 ISBN 9810232314
• Basic Notions in Condensed Matter Physics 1984 ISBN 0201328305
• A Career in Theoretical Physics 1994 ISBN 9812388664
• The Theory of Superconductivity in the High Temperature Cuprates 1997 ISBN 0691043655
• Philip W. Anderson, David Pines, Kenneth Arrow (Editor) Economy as an Evolving Complex System: the proceedings of the evolutionary paths of the global economy workshop, held sept., 1987 in Santa Fe, New Mexico (Perseus Publishing, 1988) ISBN 9780201156850
• R Penrose; Philip W Anderson "The Large, the Small and the Human Mind," Nature 386, no. 6624, (1997): 456
• "Thinking big" Nature. 437, no. 7059, (2005): 625
• "Brainwashed by Feynman?" Physics today. 53, no. 2, (2000): 11
• "Computing: Solving problems in finite time" Nature 400:6740, (1999): 115
• "When the Electron Falls Apart - In condensed matter physics, some particles behave like fragments of an electron" Physics today 50:10, (1997): 42
• "Physics: The opening to complexity" Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 92:15, (1995): 6653
• "Twenty years of talking past each other: The theory of high Tc" Physica. C, Superconductivity 460, (2007): 3

References

• Anderson, P.W. (1997). THE Theory of Superconductivity in High-$T_{\rm {c}}$ Cuprates. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691043655.
• Anderson, P.W. (1997). Basic Notions of Condensed Matter Physics. Reading: Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0201328305.
• Anderson, P.W. (1998). Concepts in Solids: Lectures on the Theory of Solids. Singapore: World Scientific. ISBN 9810232314.
• Bernstein, Jeremy (1987). Three degrees above zero: Bell Laboratories in the information age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521329833.

External links

• Philip W. Anderson, Autobiography (The Nobel Foundation, 1977, 2005).
• Philip Warren Anderson
• Video clip of Philip Anderson speaking at the International Conference on Complex Systems, Hosted by the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI)
• Anderson's Princeton web page
• Oral History interview transcript with Philip W. Anderson 30 March, 30 May, & 23 November 1999, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library and Archives
• Oral History interview transcript with Philip W. Anderson 13 July 1987, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library and Archives