Alan Harold Luther (born December 14, 1940) is an American physicist, specializing in condensed matter physics.

Education and career

Luther graduated in electrical engineering from

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

(MIT) with a B.S. in 1962 and an M.S. in 1963. In 1967 he graduated from the

University of Maryland The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of M ...

with a Ph.D. in physics under the supervision of Richard Allan Ferrell. As a postdoc Luther was from 1967 to 1969 at the

Technical University of Munich The Technical University of Munich (TUM or TU Munich; german: Technische Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Germany. It specializes in engineering, technology, medicine, and applied and natural sciences. Establis ...

and from 1969 to 1971 at

Brookhaven National Laboratory Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory located in Upton, Long Island, and was formally established in 1947 at the site of Camp Upton, a former U.S. Army base and Japanese internment c ...

. At

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

he was from 1971 to 1973 an assistant professor and from 1973 to 1976 an associate professor. At

Nordita The Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics, or NORDITA, or Nordita ( da, Nordisk Institut for Teoretisk Fysik), is an international organisation for research in theoretical physics. It was established as Nordisk Institut for Teoretisk Atomfys ...

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...

he was from 1976 a full professor from 1976 until his retirement as professor emeritus. In 1974 he found, with Victor Emery, exact solutions for one-dimensional electron gas models (Luther-Emery liquids). Luther's research also deals with boson-fermion duality,

conformal field theories A conformal field theory (CFT) is a quantum field theory that is invariant under conformal transformations. In two dimensions, there is an infinite-dimensional algebra of local conformal transformations, and conformal field theories can sometime ...

, the generalized Bethe ansatz, spin chains and two-dimensional models of statistical mechanics, strongly correlated electron systems in two dimensions, and

high-temperature superconductivity High-temperature superconductors (abbreviated high-c or HTS) are defined as materials that behave as superconductors at temperatures above , the boiling point of liquid nitrogen. The adjective "high temperature" is only in respect to previ ...

. For the academic year 1975–1976 he was a

Sloan Research Fellow The Sloan Research Fellowships are awarded annually by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation since 1955 to "provide support and recognition to early-career scientists and scholars". This program is one of the oldest of its kind in the United States. ...

. (Search on "Luther".) In 2001 he received (with Victor Emery) the

Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize The Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize is an annual award given by the American Physical Society "to recognize and encourage outstanding theoretical or experimental contributions to condensed matter physics." It was endowed by AT&T Bell Lab ...

for "fundamental contribution to the theory of interacting electrons in one dimension."

Selected publications

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Books

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Luther, Alan Harold 1940 births Living people 20th-century American physicists 21st-century American physicists Theoretical physicists Condensed matter physicists Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni University System of Maryland alumni Harvard University faculty Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize winners