John Ziman

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John Michael Ziman (born May 16, 1925 in Cambridge , † January 2, 2005 ) was a British theoretical solid-state physicist and science activist.

Life

Ziman's father was a civil servant in India and his mother came from a family of rabbinical scholars. His maternal grandfather, Angel Gaster, who was from Romania , was a noted London doctor and one of the founders of the London Jewish Hospital . His brother was Moses Gaster , an eminent scholar, vice-president of the Royal Asiatic Society and leading rabbi of the London Sephardic community.

As a child he moved with his parents to New Zealand , where his father had a farm near Cambridge . He went to school in Hamilton and began studying physics at Victoria University of Wellington in 1943 (Master's degree in 1946). He continued his studies in mathematics and theoretical physics at Balliol College of Oxford University continued where he made 1949 a degree with honors in mathematics. In 1952 he received his doctorate from Stanley Rushbrooke and KWH Stevens with a thesis on electrons in liquid metals in theoretical physics. He was then a lecturer in mathematics at Oxford from 1951 to 1953 and a scholarship from the Pressed Steel Corporation in 1953/54 . He conducted research at the Clarendon Laboratory, first on antiferromagnetism , then in the low-temperature physics group of Francis Simons on liquid helium, electron conduction in metals and transport properties in crystalline lattices. In 1954 he went to Cambridge University as a lecturer in physics , where he became a Fellow of King's College . From 1964 he was professor of theoretical physics at the University of Bristol , where he built up a theory group, including Michael Berry . Since 1966 he has been a lecturer almost annually at the International Center for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, founded by Abdus Salam . From 1982 he was visiting professor in the Department of Humanities at Imperial College London. During the Thatcher administration , he was the first head of the newly founded Science Policy Support Group (SPSG) from 1986 to 1991 .

In the 1950s and 1960s, Ziman undertook fundamental investigations into theoretical solid-state physics, especially in the expansion of the quantum theory of transport phenomena in crystalline solids and as a pioneer in the theory of disordered solids and liquid metals, in which he introduced the use of two-point correlation functions and pseudopotentials. A hallmark of his work was the close connection to the experiment. He is known from various textbooks on theoretical solid state physics ( Condensed Matter Physics ).

Later he dealt mainly with philosophical, educational and sociological questions of the sciences, about which he also wrote several books and essays. This commitment started early. In New Zealand he was temporarily active in the Communist Party and in Oxford in student organizations (International Union of Students, National Union of Students). In 1958/59 he was editor of the Cambridge Review and in 1960 he gave lectures on the radio, from which his book Public Knowledge (1968) emerged.

He observed the development of the sciences primarily from a sociological and political perspective and was one of the founders of the Council of Science and Society (CSS) in 1973 with Paul Sieghart (a lawyer ), which he chaired from 1976 to 1990. In this capacity he was co-author of a number of reports such as Superstar Technologies (1976) on the social control of technology and The world of science and the rule of law (1986, with Paul Sieghart, J. Humphrey) on human rights violations in the field of science in particular in the Soviet sphere of influence. In the 1980s he also campaigned intensively for Soviet dissidents and, among other things, was responsible for the publication of the Medvedev Papers in the West.

He was also active in arms control, but less in the Pugwash conferences , in which he was only briefly active, and more in his own committees in the CSS.

In 1967 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society .

He was married twice (first marriage from 1951 to her death in 2001 with Rosemary Dixon) and had four (adopted) children.

Fonts

Books on solid state physics:

  • Electrons and Phonons: the theory of transport phenomena in solids , Oxford, Clarendon Press 1960
  • Electrons in metals. A short guide to the Fermi surface , Taylor and Francis 1963 (Reprint from Contemporary Physics 1962)
  • Elements of Advanced Quantum Theory , Cambridge University Press 1969
  • Principles of the theory of solids , Cambridge University Press, 1972, 1979
  • Models of disorder: the theoretical physics of homogeneously disordered systems , Cambridge University Press 1979

Books, articles in general on the sciences:

  • with Jasper Rose Camford observed , London, Gollancz 1964 (social environment of the traditional elite universities Cambridge, Oxford)
  • Public Knowledge: an essay concerning the social dimension of science , Cambridge University Press 1968
  • The Force of Knowledge: The Scientific Dimension of Society , Cambridge University Press 1976
  • Reliable Knowledge: an Exploration of the Grounds for Belief in Science , Cambridge University Press 1978
  • Teaching and Learning about Science and Society , Cambridge University Press 1980
  • An Introduction to Science Studies: The Philosophical and Social Aspects of Science and Technology , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984
  • Prometheus Bound: Science in a dynamic steady state , Cambridge University Press 1994
  • Of one mind: the collectivization of science , AIP Press (American Institute of Physics), 1995
  • Real Science: What It Is and What It Means , Cambridge University Press 2000
  • The collectivization of Science , Proc. Royal Society, Series B, Volume 219, 1983, pp. 1-19 (Bernal Lecture)
  • Is Science loosing its objectivity? , Nature, Volume 382, ​​1996, pp. 751-754 (Medawar Lecture, abridged version)

literature

  • Michael Berry, JF Nye, Biography in the Biographical Memoirs of the Royal Society, Volume 52, 2006, pp. 479-491
  • Enderby, Obituary in Physics Today, 2005, No. 11

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Berry, Nye, Obituary at the Royal Society, see literature.
  2. ^ Ziman A theory of the electrical properties of liquid metals , Philosophical Magazine, Volume 6, 1961, pp. 1013-1034, Part 2 with CC Bradley, TE Faber, EG Wilson, Philosophical Magazine, Volume 7, 1962, pp. 865– 887 Ziman Electrons in liquid metals and other disordered systems , Proc. Roy. Soc., Series A, Volume 318, 1970, pp. 401-420 In it he reports that the impetus for studying liquid metals came from Nevill Francis Mott .
  3. ↑ Scientists: Gentlemen or Players? , Science is social
  4. ↑ As early as 1968 in the Nature article Letter to an imaginary Soviet Scientist , Nature, Volume 217, 1968, p. 123
  5. ^ ZA Medvedev The Medvedev Papers , Macmillan 1971, foreword by Ziman
personal data
SURNAME Ziman, John
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ziman, John Michael (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British solid state theoretical physicist, science activist and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH May 16, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Cambridge
DATE OF DEATH January 2, 2005