Condensed matter physics is the field of physics that deals with the macroscopic and microscopic physical properties of matter, especially the solid and liquid phases which arise from electromagnetic forces between atoms. More generally, the subject deals with condensed phases of matter: systems of many constituents with strong interactions among them. More exotic condensed phases include the superconducting phase exhibited by certain materials at extremely low cryogenic temperature, the ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic phases of spins on crystal lattices of atoms, and the Bose–Einstein condensate found in ultracold atomic systems. Condensed matter physicists seek to understand the behavior of these phases by experiments to measure various material properties, and by applying the physical laws of quantum mechanics, electromagnetism, statistical mechanics, and other physics theories to develop mathematical models.
Physics is the natural science of matter, involving the study of matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. Physics is one of the most fundamental scientific disciplines, with its main goal being to understand how the universe behaves. A scientist who specializes in the field of physics is called a physicist.
Solid-state physics is the study of rigid matter, or solids, through methods such as solid-state chemistry, quantum mechanics, crystallography, electromagnetism, and metallurgy. It is the largest branch of condensed matter physics. Solid-state physics studies how the large-scale properties of solid materials result from their atomic-scale properties. Thus, solid-state physics forms a theoretical basis of materials science. Along with solid-state chemistry, it also has direct applications in the technology of transistors and semiconductors.
Shirley Ann Jackson, is an American physicist, and was the 18th president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She is the first African-American woman to have earned a doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Theoretical Elementary Particle Physics, and the first African-American woman to have earned a doctorate at MIT in any field. She is also the second African-American woman in the United States to earn a doctorate in physics.
Brian David Josephson is a Welsh theoretical physicist and professor emeritus of physics at the University of Cambridge. Best known for his pioneering work on superconductivity and quantum tunnelling, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1973 for his prediction of the Josephson effect, made in 1962 when he was a 22-year-old PhD student at Cambridge University. Josephson is the first Welshman to have won a Nobel Prize in Physics. He shared the prize with physicists Leo Esaki and Ivar Giaever, who jointly received half the award for their own work on quantum tunnelling.
The University of Johannesburg (UJ) is a public university located in Johannesburg, South Africa. The University of Johannesburg came into existence on 1 January 2005 as the result of a merger between the Rand Afrikaans University (RAU), the Technikon Witwatersrand (TWR) and the Soweto and East Rand campuses of Vista University. Prior to the merger, the Daveyton and Soweto campuses of the former Vista University had been incorporated into RAU. As a result of the merger of Rand Afrikaans University (RAU), it is common for alumni to refer to the university as RAU. The vice-chancellor and principal of UJ is Professor Letlhokwa George Mpedi who took office on 1 January 2023. Between 2018 and 2022, UJ's vice-chancellor and principal was Tshilidzi Marwala.
The Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research was founded in 1969 and is one of the 82 Max Planck Institutes of the Max Planck Society. It is located on a campus in Stuttgart, together with the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems.
Nai-Chang Yeh is a Taiwanese-American physicist specializing in experimental condensed matter physics.
The Nevill Mott Medal and Prize is an award presented in selected years by the Institute of Physics in the United Kingdom, for distinguished research in condensed matter or materials physics. It was first established in 1997 thanks to a donation from Sir Nevill Mott's family. Sir Nevill Mott was one of the outstanding British condensed matter theorists and won a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1977. He died in 1996. The award consists of a silver medal and a prize of £1000.
Elizabeth A. Rauscher (1937–2019) was an American physicist and parapsychologist. She was born in Berkeley, California on March 18, 1937. She died on July 3, 2019.
Michelle Yvonne Simmons is an Australian quantum physicist, recognised internationally as the creator of the field of atomic electronics.
Allan H. MacDonald is a theoretical condensed matter physicist and the Sid W. Richardson Foundation Regents Chair Professor of Physics at The University of Texas at Austin. He was born in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada, and attended local schools completing a B.S. at St. Francis Xavier University in 1973. He completed his Ph.D.in physics at The University of Toronto in 1978, working with S.H. Vosko on relativistic generalizations of density functional theory, and on the application of density functional theory to magnetism in metals.
Andrew John Schofield is an academic and administrator who is the Vice-Chancellor of Lancaster University. A theoretical physicist, he was previously a Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University of Birmingham and Head of its College of Engineering and Physical Sciences. As an academic, his research focus is in the theory of correlated quantum systems, in particular non-Fermi liquids, quantum criticality and high-temperature superconductivity.
Giulia Galli is a condensed-matter physicist. She is the Liew Family Professor of Electronic Structure and Simulations in the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and the department of chemistry at the University of Chicago and senior scientist at Argonne National Laboratory. She is also the director of the Midwest Integrated Center for Computational Materials. She is recognized for her contributions to the fields of computational condensed-matter, materials science, and nanoscience, most notably first principles simulations of materials and liquids, in particular materials for energy, properties of water, and excited state phenomena.
Deborah J. Jackson is an American physicist and Program Manager at the National Science Foundation, and a Fellow of the National Society of Black Physicists. She was the first African American woman to receive a Ph.D. in physics from Stanford University. She is an expert on "electromagnetic phenomena" with a research and development career that spans the full range of the electromagnetic spectrum from materials studies using hard x-ray wavelengths, to nonlinear optics and spectroscopy in the near-infrared, to the fielding of radio frequency instrumentation on deep space missions such as Cassini and Mars Observer.
Xie Chen is a Chinese physicist and a professor of theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology. Her work covers both the field of condensed matter physics and quantum information, with a focus on many-body quantum mechanical systems with unconventional emergent phenomena. She won the 2020 New Horizons in Physics Prize for "incisive contributions to the understanding of topological states of matter and the relationships between them"
Silke Bühler-Paschen is a German-Austrian solid-state physicist and has been professor for physics at TU Wien, Austria since 2005.
Athena Safa Sefat, born 1977 in Iran is a Canadian/American physicist, with research focus on quantum materials and correlated phenomena. She was a senior scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and led the DOE Basic Energy Science on "Probing Competing Chemical, Electronic, and Spin Correlations for Quantum Materials Functionality". She is currently a Program Manager at U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, with Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering.
Erica W. Carlson is an American physicist specializing in superconductors, liquid crystals, and strongly correlated materials. She is 150th Anniversary Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Purdue University. As well as for her research, she is known for her work in physics education for quantum physics, and for her introduction of innovative technologies including podcasts and wikis into her physics teaching.
Smitha Vishveshwara is an Indian-American theoretical quantum condensed matter physicist whose research includes work on cold Bose gases and non-equilibrium quantum dynamics, as well as strongly correlated materials, dimensional confinement, fractionalization of quasiparticles, quantum quench dynamics, connections from condensed matter physics to protein structure networks, and quantum analogues of black hole collision ringdown. She is a professor of physics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
