Nobel Laureate to Lecture on 17 March

2 March 2004 — Anthony J. Leggett, who was awarded the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physics for his “decisive theory explaining how the atoms (of helium 3) interact and are ordered in the superfluid state,” will give a personal account of his discovery on 17 March 2004 at 11:00 a.m. in 119 Osmond Laboratory on the Penn State University Park campus. Coffee and tea will be served at the overpass between Davey and Osmond laboratories at 10:30 a.m. The event is free and open to the public.

Leggett's talk, titled "Superfluid Helium-3: The Early Days as Seen by a Theorist," will be a slightly expanded version of the Nobel lecture that he delivered in Stockholm, Sweden, when he received the prestigious award in October 2003. "I will present a very personal account of the way in which, in the approximately 12 months between July 1972 and July 1973, we came to a theoretical understanding of the puzzling experimental data on what we now know as superfluid Helium-3," he explains.

Leggett is the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor and a Center for Advanced Study Professor of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana. Leggett is a pioneer in the theoretical understanding of superfluid helium, high-temperature superconductivity and atomic gases undergoing Bose-Einstein condensation. He is a leader in the study of the quantum physics of certain macroscopic systems and the use of condensed systems to test the foundations of quantum mechanics. Renowned worldwide for his trail-blazing contributions to low-temperature physics, Leggett has been recognized with numerous honors and awards in addition to the Nobel Prize in Physics. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He also is a Fellow of the Royal Society in the United Kingdom, the American Physical Society, and the American Institute of Physics. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Physics in the United Kingdom.

For more information, call 865-7534.

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