Distinguished Professor of Physics Zachary Fisk from Los Alamos National Laboratory and University of California Irvine will present the 14th Reynolds Lecture in the UConn Physics Department on Friday, September 25 at 4PM in the Physics Building, room P-38.
Professor Fisk is a world-leading expert on superconductivity, having steadily discovered new crystalline materials with this amazing property for most of his career. With nearly 1000 publications on the subject, he is one of the most highly cited scientists in the world. Zach's many profound contributions have been recognized with prizes and accolades including election to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Physical Society's International Prize for New Materials, and just this year, the Bernd Matthias Prize for superconductivity research.
Zach's talk, entitled "The New Superconductors" explores the status of superconductivity research in cases where the electron-electron interaction is an important driver of the physics. Broad perspectives and introductory background will be presented. For more about Professor Fisk and his contributions, see this link by the journal Nature.
The Reynolds Lecture is an annual public lecture series wherein distinguished researchers in fields related to superconductivity give public and accessible talks on this rich subject. The series is named in honor of Charles Reynolds, who served as Professor of Physics at UConn from 1952 - 1971 when he passed away. Charles Reynolds was one of the co-discoverers of the isotope effect in superconductors.
Soon after the second world war, superconducting materials were made available for basic scientific studies, and two groups independently studied the dependence of the superconducting transition temperature Tc upon isotopic mass in samples of mercury. They found a dependence of Tc which varied inversely as the square root of isotope mass. This work was published in back to back letters in the Physical Review in 1951, providing important direct evidence for the electron-lattice coupling mechanism of superconductivity, leading to the development of the Bardeen-Cooper-Schieffer theory, which appeared to be correct for all superconbductors known at the time. The search is not over however, as many materials have since been discovered which challenge the BCS theory.
There will be a welcome reception in the Physics Reading Room before the Reynolds Lecture at 3:30.
For more information, contact: Jason Hancock at jason.hancock@uconn.edu