Leon Neil Cooper

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Leon Cooper, 2007

Leon Neil Cooper (born February 28, 1930 in New York ) is an American physicist . He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1972 together with John Bardeen and John Robert Schrieffer for co-developing the BCS theory , which helps explain superconductivity .

life and work

Cooper studied at Columbia University (bachelor's degree in 1951, master's degree in 1953), where he received his doctorate in 1954 (Mu-Mesonic atoms and the electromagnetic radius of the nucleus). 1954/1955 he was at the Institute for Advanced Study and then until 1957 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign . In 1957 he was assistant professor at Ohio State University and in 1958 first associate professor and from 1962 professor at Brown University in Providence ( Rhode Island ). From 1966 he was there "Henry Ledyard Goddard University Professor" and from 1974 "Thomas J. Watson Senior Professor of Science". From 1992 he was director of the Institute of Neuroscience ("Institute of Brain and Neural Systems").

Cooper's main contribution is in the BCS theory. The BCS theory was developed between 1955 and 1957 by John Bardeen and John Robert Schrieffer and is based on the concept of Cooper pairs , which enables electrons to be arranged in pairs under special conditions .

Later he dealt with the theory of the brain, neural networks and the biology of learning.

Since 1975 he has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences , whose Comstock Prize for Physics he received in 1968 with Schrieffer. He is also a member of the American Philosophical Society , the Society for Neuroscience, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science . In 1973 he received honorary doctorates from Columbia University and the University of Sussex . He also holds honorary doctorates from Gustaphus Adolphus College, the University of Illinois (1974), Brown University (1974), Paris VI University (Pierre et Marie Curie) and Ohio State University. In 1977 he received the French Descartes Medal (University of Paris René Descartes) and in 2000 the Medal of the College de France. From 1959 to 1966 he was Sloan Research Fellow , 1963 Fellow of the American Physical Society and 1965/66 Guggenheim Fellow. He received the Excellence Award Graduate Faculties from Columbia University and the John Jay Award from Columbia College.

Cooper has taught and worked at various institutions abroad, including the Pasteur Institute and the Collège de France in Paris and the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva , Switzerland.

Trivia

The fictional character Sheldon Cooper - a gifted physicist - from the television series The Big Bang Theory , has been named after the physicists Sheldon Lee Glashow and Leon Neil Cooper in their first and last names .

Fonts

  • Cooper: Bound electron pairs in a degenerate electron gas. In: Physical Review . Volume 104, 1956, p. 1189
  • Bardeen, Cooper, Schrieffer: Microscopic theory of superconductivity. In: Physical Review. Volume 106, 1957, p. 162
  • Bardeen, Cooper, Schrieffer: Theory of Superconductivity. In: Physical Review. Volume 108, 1957, p. 1175
  • Cooper: On the pairing interaction in the theory of superconductivity. In: Cargese Lectures. Gordon and Breach 1967
  • Cooper: An introduction to the meaning and structure of physics. Harper and Row, 1968, 1970
  • Cooper: Origins of Theory of Superconductivity. In: IEEE Transactions Magnetics. Volume 23, 1987, p. 376
  • Cooper: How we learn, how we remember: toward an understanding of brain and neural systems. Selected papers of Leon Cooper. World Scientific 1995
  • Cooper: Memories and memory - a physicists approach to the brain. In: International Journal of Modern Physics. Series A, Volume 15, 2000, p. 4069
  • Cooper et al. a .: Theory of cortical plasticity. World Scientific 2004

Web links

Commons : Leon Cooper  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ According to information in the English wikipedia, his middle name is not Neil, but just N without a dot, which means that he actually has no middle name. According to other information reported by his family, his middle name is Nathan instead.
  2. ↑ Prof. Dr. Leon Neil Cooper ( english ) Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings. Retrieved July 24, 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Cooper, Leon Neil
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cooper, Leon
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American physicist
DATE OF BIRTH February 28, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH new York