Kondo effect

Interview with Thomas Witten, Homer J. Livingston Professor, Emeritus, in the Department of Physics, James Franck Institute. Witten recounts his childhood in Maryland, Utah, and then Colorado, as his father, a medical doctor moved jobs, and he describes his undergraduate experience at Reed College and where majored in physics and where he benefited from excellent attention from the professors. He discusses his graduate work at UC San Diego, where he was advised by Shang Ma working on two-dimensional charged Bose gas research, and he describes his postdoctoral research at Princeton to work with John Hopfield. Witten conveys the exotic nature of Ken Wilson’s ideas on renormalization during that time, and he explains the origins of soft matter physics as a distinct field and his work at Saclay before joining the faculty at the University of Michigan. He describes his subsequent research on pushing concepts of renormalization into polymers and related work on the Kondo effect. Witten explains his decision to join the research lab at Exxon, and he conveys Exxon’s emulation of Bell Labs as a place where he could pursue basic science within an industrial research lab, and where he could continue his work on polymers. He describes the downsizing of the lab and his decision to join the faculty at the University of Chicago, and his discusses his developing interests in buckyballs and capillary flow. Witten describes his affiliation with the James Franck Institute and its rich history, and he explains his current interests in granular materials, thin sheets, and colloidal rotation. At the end of the interview, Witten emphasizes the technological impact of fast video on soft matter physics and his interest in the physics of crumpling objects.

In this interview, David Zierler, Oral Historian for AIP, interviews Marc Kastner, Donner Professor of Physics at MIT and senior science advisor to the Science Philanthropy Alliance. Kastner explains the nomenclature transition from solid state to condensed matter physics, and he surveys the interplay between theory and experiment in his field.  He recounts his childhood in Ottawa and the influence of his father, who was an experimental physicist, and he explains the opportunities that led to his admission to the University of Chicago. Kastner explains his decision to remain at Chicago for graduate school to work under the direction of Hellmut Fritzsche on optical properties of semiconductors under pressure. He discusses his postdoctoral appointment at Harvard to work with Bill Paul on amorphous silicon, and his connection to David Adler who facilitated his faculty appointment at MIT. Kastner describes his work on amorphous semiconductors and transient excitation and his collaboration with Bob Birgeneau on high Tc. He discusses Joe Imry’s work on heterostructures and subsequent research on the Kondo effect, and how he came to understand the significance of his discovery of the single-electron transistor. Kastner discusses his tenure as department chair, director of MRSEC, and dean of science, and he explains his decision to retire and to join the Science Philanthropy Alliance. He describes his current work with his former student David Goldhaber-Gordon and his excitement over the current research on twistronics. At the end of the interview, Kastner reflects on the role of luck in his career, the centrality of technological advance in his research and what we can learn about physics more broadly as a result of the single-electron transistor.

In this interview, Paul Chaikin, Silver Professor of Physics at NYU, recounts his childhood in Brooklyn and he describes his early interests in math and science and his education Stuyvesant High School. He discusses his undergraduate education at Caltech, he conveys how special it was to learn from Feynman and Pauling, and he explains the fields that would go on to form his area of specialty, soft matter physics. Chaikin explains his reasoning to pursue a graduate degree with Bob Schrieffer at Penn, where he did his thesis research on the Kondo effect in superconductors. He describes his first postgraduate work at UCLA where he developed an expertise in thermoelectric power, and he describes the intellectual and technological developments that paved the way for the creation of soft matter physics as a distinct field. Chaikin explains what it would take to solve the many-body problem of nonequilibrium phenomena, and he describes the delicate nature of collaborating with biologists while ensuring they don’t overtake the field. He discusses his joint appointment with Penn physics and the research laboratory at Exxon, and he explains his move to Princeton, which was just starting to develop a program in soft matter physics. Chaikin describes the famous experiment that discovered that M&M shapes (ellispoids) provided the most efficient and minimal negative space in packing applications, and he explains his decision to join the faculty at NYU. At the end of the interview, Chaikin reflects on some of the remaining mysteries in the field, and he describes his interest in pursing research on self-assembly among soft condensed matters.  

Myriam Sarachik, Distinguished Professor Emerita Physics at City College of New York, is interviewed by David Zierler. Sarachik recounts her turbulent childhood first in Belgium, from which her orthodox Jewish family evacuated during World War II, then in Cuba, and then in New York. She describes some of the challenges of being a girl interested in science and she recounts her undergraduate at Barnard, where her talents in physics first became apparent. Sarachik discusses the formative influence of Polykarp Kusch and her experiences with Dick Garwin, who was her graduate advisor at Columbia. She explains her dissertation research measuring the attenuation of a magnetic field through a superconducting film right at the time that BCS (Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer) theory was developing. Sarachik describes her postgraduate work at Bell Labs, where she worked in Ted Geballe’s group, and where she conducted research in measuring the resistivity of alloys for which her findings came to be known as the Kondo effect. Sarachik discusses her decision to leave Bell to join the faculty at City College, where she immediately got to work building a lab and taking on students. She describes her coping mechanisms in her attempt to continue her career following the tragic loss of her child. Sarachik discusses her work on doped semiconductors and then in searching for the macroscopic quantum tunneling of magnetization. She reflects on her feelings of validation within the field as it related to her advisory work on numerous scientific boards and committees, and in particular her tenure as president of the APS. Sarachik describes her subsequent research on metal insulator transitions in two dimensions, and she conveys the impact of her major profile in the New York Times in 2020. At the end of the interview, Sarachik returns to her religious family roots and affirms both the cultural influence of this upbringing and her subsequent embrace of atheism. Sarachik concludes expressing wonderment at what the true meaning of quantum mechanical effects might tell us about nature. 

Topics discussed include: Harvard education, war work at Woods Hole, research with Edward Purcell, University of Illinois, Albert Overhauser, superconductivity, Kondo effect, President's Science Advisory Committee, teaching, consulting, computing, John Bardeen, Wheeler Loomis, David Pines, Fred Seitz and Edward van Vleck.

In this interview, K. G. Wilson discusses the development of the renormalization group. Topics discussed include: Andrew Pickering; the Kondo problem; Ken Johnson; Francis Low; Freeman Dyson; field theory; A. A. Katanov; Michael Fisher; G. Jona-Lasinio; Carlo Di Castro; Franz Wegner; Alexander Patashinski; Valery Pokrovsky; Curtis Callan; Kurt Symanzik; University of Washington Department of Physics; research on teaching physics; s-matrix theory; Peter Carruthers.

Anderson discusses his interest in Complexity and Physics of Information; the Santa Fe Institute; his doubts about DCS theory of superconductivity and theory of A15s; resonation valence bond ideas; political involvement from local issues to Star Wars defense. Other topics include: ferromagnetism; Ginzburg-Landau theory; Josephson effect; magnetism; military research in the United States; solid state physics; solid state physics in Japan; spin glasses; superconductivity; and spin lattice relaxation.

Covers the gradual move from Bell Labs to Princeton, at first part time then full; discusses work on spin glass problem and ramifications for optimization theory and neural networks; reaction to Nobel Prize; return to localization and Gang of Four paper; thoughts on mixed valance problem and heavy electron systems.

Anderson discusses the theory of superfluid Helium-3; recalls germination of the idea and eventual publication of "More is Different"; reviews work on topological defects; discusses motivation for resonation valence bond work with Fazekas; talks about interaction with Lee and Rice on charge density waves; recalls foray into astrophysics with Pines and Alpar and theory of pulsars glitches.

Interview focuses briefly on personal details of Philip Anderson's life and almost exclusively on technical aspects of Anderson's research. After discussing his undergraduate and graduate education at Harvard including his research on spectral lines, he begins the technical aspects of the interview by reviewing his interest in anti-ferromagnetism and his time in Japan. Included in this are his thoughts on the organization of the Japanese scientific community. The second half of the interview deals entirely with his interest in superconductivity and localized moments. Within this general topic there is some treatment of his thoughts on the time that he spent in Cambridge, MA.