John Robert Schrieffer is American physicist and winner, with John Bardeen and Leon N. Cooper, of the 1972 Nobel Prize for Physics for developing the BCS theory (for their initials), the first successful microscopic theory of superconductivity.

John Robert Schrieffer was born in Oak Park, Illinois on May 31, 1931, son of John H. Schrieffer and his wife Louis (née Anderson). In 1940, the family moved to Manhasset, New York and in 1947 to Eustis, Florida where they became active in the citrus industry. Robert remembers spending most of his Florida days playing with gadgets; first home-made rockets, then ham radio. The latter hobby sparked a career interest in electrical engineering.
 

Schrieffer a student of the University of Illinois, 1954

Following his graduation from Eustis High School in 1949, Schrieffer was admitted to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where for two years he majored in electrical engineering, then changed to physics in his junior year. He completed a bachelor's thesis in 1953 on the multiple structure in heavy atoms under the direction of Professor John C. Slater. Following up on an interest in solid state physics developed while at MIT, he began graduate studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where he immediately began research with Professor John Bardeen. After working out a problem dealing with electrical conduction on semiconductor surfaces, Schrieffer spent a year in the laboratory, applying the theory to several surface problems. In the third year of graduate studies, he joined Bardeen and Cooper in developing the theory of superconductivity, which constituted his doctoral dissertation in 1957.

 

Schrieffer spent the academic year 1957-58 as a National Science Foundation fellow at the University of Birmingham and the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, where he continued research in superconductivity. Following a year as assistant professor at the University of Chicago, he returned to the University of Illinois in 1959 as a faculty member. In 1960 he returned to the Bohr Institute for a summer visit, during which he became engaged to Anne Grete Thomsen whom he married at Christmas of that year. The Schrieffers have three children, Bolette, Paul, and Regina. In 1962 Schrieffer joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where in 1964 he was appointed Mary Amanda Wood Professor in Physics.

John Robert Schrieffer published Theory of Superconductivity in 1964. Dr. Schrieffer along with John Bardeen and Leon Cooper won the 1972 Nobel Prize in Physics for developing the BCS theory (for their initials), the first successful microscopic theory of superconductivity. Although first described by K. Onnes (1911), no theoretical explanation had been accepted. It explains how certain metals and alloys lose all resistance to electrical current at extremely low temperatures. Cooper had discovered that electrons in a superconductor are grouped in pairs, now called Cooper pairs, and that the motions of all of the Cooper pairs within a single superconductor are correlated; they constitute a system that functions as a single entity. Application of an electrical voltage to the superconductor causes all Cooper pairs to move, constituting a current. When the voltage is removed, current continues to flow indefinitely because the pairs encounter no opposition. For the current to stop, all of the Cooper pairs would have to be halted at the same time, a very unlikely occurrence. As a superconductor is warmed, its Cooper pairs separate into individual electrons, and the material becomes normal, or nonsuperconducting. Many other aspects of the behaviour of superconductors are explained by the BCS theory. The theory supplies a means by which the energy required to separate the Cooper pairs into their individual electrons can be measured experimentally. The BCS theory also explains the isotope effect, in which the temperature at which superconductivity appears is reduced if heavier atoms of the elements making up the material are introduced.
 

Schrieffer accepts the Nobel Prize from Norway's King Olav V in 1972

Schrieffer (far right) adjusts the neckware of friend and co-winner Leon Cooper at the Oslo ceremony, 1972

 

In 1980 Schrieffer was appointed Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara and to the position of Chancellor Professor in 1984. He served as Director of the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara from 1984-89. In 1992 he was appointed University Professor at Florida State University and Chief Scientist of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory. Schrieffer, at the podium, joined FSU's physics faculty in 1992

 

Schrieffer holds honorary degrees from the Technische Hochschule, Munich and the Universities of Geneva, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Cincinnati, Tel-Aviv, Alabama. In 1969 he was appointed by Cornell to a six-year term as a Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences of which he is a member of their council, the American Philosophical Society, the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters and the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. His awards include the Guggenheim Fellowship, Oliver E. Buckley Solid State Physics Prize (1968), Comstock Prize, National Academy of Science, the Nobel Prize in Physics shared with John Bardeen and Leon N. Cooper in 1972 for the microscopic theory of superconductivity, John Ericsson Medal, American Society of Swedish Engineers, University of Illinois Alumni Achievement Award, and in 1984 the National Medal of Science. The main thrust of his recent work has been in the area of high-temperature superconductivity, strongly correlated electrons, and the dynamics of electrons in strong magnetic fields.

 

Presently Dr. Schrieffer's research is focused on the theory of high temperature superconductivity and magnetism in condensed matter systems.

This text has been compiled from the biographies of Schrieffer available in the Internet:
( 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 ).