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John Bardeen and the BCS Theory of Superconductivity*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2013

Lillian Hoddeson
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Every theory of superconductivity can be disproved! This tongue-in-cheek theorem struck a chord when Felix Bloch announced it in the early 1930s. Virtually every major physicist then working on theory—including Bloch, Niels Bohr, Wolfgang Pauli, Werner Heisenberg, Lev Landau, Leon Brillouin, W. Elsasser, Yakov Frenkel, and Ralph Kronig—had tried and failed to explain the mysterious phenomenon in which below a few degrees kelvin certain metals and alloys lose all their electrical resistance. The frequency with which Bloch's theorem was quoted suggests the frustration of the many physicists who were struggling to explain superconductivity.

Neither the tools nor the evidence were yet adequate for solving the problem. These would gradually be created during the 1940s and 1950s, but bringing them to bear on superconductivity and solving the long-standing riddle required a special set of talents and abilities: a deep understanding of quantum mechanics and solid-state physics, confidence in the solubility of the problem, intuition about the phenomenon, a practical approach to problem-solving, patience, teamwork, and above all refusal to give up in the face of repeated failures. When John Bardeen took on the problem of superconductivity in the late 1930s, he held it like a bulldog holds a piece of meat, until he, his student J. Robert Schrieffer, and postdoctoral candidate Leon Cooper solved it in 1957.

Type
Special Feature
Information
MRS Bulletin , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , January 1999 , pp. 50 - 55
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 1999

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Footnotes

*

This article draws in part on a manuscript by L. Hoddeson and V. Daitch, Centle Genius: The Life and Physics of John Bardeen; and on sections on superconductivit y by L. Hoddeson and G. Baym, “Collective Phenomena,” in Out of the Crystal Maze: A History of Solid State Physics, 1900–1960, edited by L. Hoddeson, E. Braun, J. Teichmann, and S. Weart (Oxford University Press, New York, 1992) p. 489.

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