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Winner of 2003 Nobel Prize in Physics Is Featured Speaker for Five College Lecture Series
Leggett, who shared the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physics for his theoretical work on superfluid Helium-3, has been John D. and Catherine T. Macarthur Professor of physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign since 1983. His principal research interests lie in the areas of condensed matter physics, particularly high-temperature superconductivity, glasses and ultra cold atomic gases, and the foundations of quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics, he points out, "has been enormously successful in describing nature at the atomic level, and most physicists believe that it is in principle the "whole truth" about the world, even at the everyday level." Such a view,held prima facie, Leggett contends, leads to "a severe problem: in certain circumstances, the most natural interpretation of the theory implies that no definite outcome of an experiment occurs until the act of ‘observation.’" Dismissed for many decades as a "merely philosophical" consideration, in the last dozen years or so, Leggett notes, "the situation has changed very dramatically." In his talk, the Nobel laureate will discuss why the situation has changed so dramatically, present some popular "resolutions" for it, and outline the ongoing experiments and prospects for the future. Leggett attended Balliol College, Oxford, where he majored in classical languages and literature, philosophy and Greco-Roman history). Subsequently, he attended Merton College, Oxford, where he took a second undergraduate degree in Physics and went on to earn a Ph.D. in theoretical physics under the supervision of D. ter Haar. Page created 11/23/05
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Does The Everyday World Really Obey Quantum Mechanics? Nobel laureate Anthony J. Leggett (pictured) will answer that question in a talk to be given at Amherst College on December 1, 2006 for the Five College series called "What’s New in Physics?" The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will take place in Pruyne Hall (Fayerweather 115) at 7 p.m.