The Ohio State community will be honored today with the presence of a Nobel Prize winner.
Anthony Leggett, a professor of physics at the University of Illinois and a 2003 Nobel Prize recipient in physics, will be presenting his lecture, “You Can’t Drink a Quantum Liquid,” to the physics community, which is eager to learn more about Leggett’s award-winning research.
“We, as scientists, like figuring things out and then telling people. We also like to be awed by other people’s work,” said Thomas Lemberger, professor of physics at OSU.
“He is one of the world’s greatest experts on quantum fluids,” said Paul Goldbart, a professor of physics at Illinois and a colleague of Leggett’s. “He is also an outstanding colleague and loved in the physics community.”
Leggett has served on Illinois faculty since 1983 and has become well-known and well-recognized as one of the world’s leaders in the theory of low-temperature physics. Leggett, who is originally from the United Kingdom, is a member of many scientific societies, including the National Academy of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Science. He is also an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Physics in the United Kingdom.
Leggett’s work is built on the original discovery of superconductivity in 1911 and the first model of a quantum liquid in 1957. Leggett has taken these discoveries and used them as a starting block to his own research. He discovered what sorts of quantum liquids are possible, under what circumstances they occur and the measurable properties of each.
“The work that won me the Nobel Prize is work that I actually did in 1972-1973, but I had been doing research related to that for about eight years,” Leggett said.
Leggett’s work is highly respected because scientists had worked for years, since the first model was developed, to find a better understanding of the quantum liquids. These liquids are difficult to grasp because, unlike most liquids, the particles cannot be stated to be in one specific place.
Lemberger said scientists can only define the probability of where those particles may be.
Leggett is always working to develop a better understanding of quantum mechanics. Some of his research topics include experiment oriented studies of basic conceptual issues in the foundations of quantum mechanics. Through this research, Leggett is testing and studying other possible alternative explanations of experiments in the literature of quantum mechanics.
In Leggett’s speech at the Nobel Banquet on Dec. 10, he offered advice to those students hoping to embark on a career in the field of theoretical physics.
“If you find a problem interesting, don’t worry too much about whether it has been solved in existing literature. You will have a lot more fun with it if you don’t know, and you learn a lot even if what you come up with turns out not to be publishable,” he said at the banquet.
In his speech this evening, Leggett hopes to give people a taste of what he has accomplished throughout his career.
“This will not be the standard Nobel speech that I gave in Stockholm when I received the prize, but I will be speaking about more general information about quantum liquids and the fascination about them,” Leggett said.
Leggett’s speech is part of the 42nd annual Smith Lecture, held at 8 p.m. today in room 131 of Hitchcock Hall.
