Allan H. MacDonald

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Allan Hugh MacDonald (born December 1, 1951 in Antigonish , Nova Scotia ) is a Canadian theoretical solid-state physicist .

In 2007 he received the Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize for fundamental experimental and theoretical research on correlated many-electron systems in low dimensions . He also received the Herzberg Medal from the Canadian Association of Physicists . He is a fellow of the American Physical Society .

MacDonald studied at Saint Francis Xavier University in Antigonish with a bachelor's degree in 1973 and at the University of Toronto with a master's degree in 1974 and a doctorate in physics in 1978 ( On a relativistic density functional formation ). As a post-doctoral student he was at the Ottawa Laboratory of the National Research Council of Canada, from 1981 as a permanent member. From 1987 to 2000 he was a professor at Indiana University and since 2000 he has been a professor at the University of Texas at Austin ( Sid W. Richardson Professor ). He was a visiting scholar at theETH Zurich , the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart and at Caltech .

Initially he dealt with density functional theory with application to metallic magnetism and relativistic generalization. From 1982 he dealt specifically with the (fractional and integer) quantum hall effect (QHE). In the 2000s he dealt with spintronics , including ferromagnetic semiconductors, the interaction of magnetic and transport properties ( current induced torque ) and the spin Hall effect, and with graphs (including QHE in graphs). He was one of those who proposed the intrinsic spin Hall effect in 2003 (independently, this was done simultaneously by Shoucheng Zhang and colleagues). With his post-doctoral student Rafi Bistritzer , he investigated the moiré patterns in double-layer graphs that result from a mutual shift or rotation of the two periodic grids against each other, the new transport phenomena that result from this. At a certain magic angle of 1.1 degrees of twist, superconductivity should arise. This was confirmed by Pablo Jarillo-Herrero at MIT in 2017 . With Hongki Min and Jung-Jung Su, they also predicted room temperature superfluidity in bilayer graphs.

He has been married since 1974 and has two children.

In 2005 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , and in 2010 to the National Academy of Sciences . In 2012 he received the Ernst Mach Medal of Honor . In 2020 he was awarded the Wolf Prize in Physics with Bistritzer and Pablo Jarillo-Herrero for pioneering work of a theoretical and experimental nature on mutually twisted double-layer graphs (laudation). The work on the prediction of a novel superconductor in twisted double-layer graphene was initially received critically (even if she encouraged Jarillo-Herrero at MIT to continue working on it experimentally), especially the article by Jarillo-Herrero and colleagues in Nature 2018 on the experimental Confirmation revolutionized physics after the laudation of the Wolf Prize and triggered a flood of further publications.

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  1. ↑ Life data according to American Men and Women of Science , Thomson Gale 2004
  2. ^ Official website for the Buckley Prize
  3. ↑ Dimitrie Culcer, Q. Niu, NA Sinitsyn, T. Jungwirth, AH MacDonald, J. Sinova: Universal Intrinsic Spin-Hall Effect, Phys. Rev. Lett., Vol. 92, 2004, p. 126603
  4. ^ R. Bistritzer, AH MacDonald: Moiré bands in twisted double-layer graphene, Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA, Vol. 108, 2011, pp. 12233-12237, Arxiv
  5. ↑ R.Bistritzer, AH MacDonald: Materials science: graphene moiré mystery solved, Nature, Vol 474, 2011, p 453
  6. ^ Bistritzer, MacDonald, Su, Min: Room-Temperature Superfluidity in Graphene Bilayers , Phys. Rev. B, Volume 78, 2008, pp. 121401 (R), Arxiv
  7. ↑ For pioneering theoretical and experimental work on twisted bilayer graphene (laudation), Wolf Prize 2020
personal data
SURNAME MacDonald, Allan H.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES MacDonald, Allan Hugh (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian physicist
DATE OF BIRTH December 1, 1951
PLACE OF BIRTH Antigonish , Nova Scotia