Frank Steglich (born 14 March 1941) is a German physicist. He studied physics in the

University of Münster The University of Münster (german: Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, WWU) is a public research university located in the city of Münster, North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. With more than 43,000 students and over 120 fields of stud ...

and the

University of Göttingen The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen, (german: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, known informally as Georgia Augusta) is a public research university in the city of Göttingen, Germany. Founded ...

. He received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize by the

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft The German Research Foundation (german: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft ; DFG ) is a German research funding organization, which functions as a self-governing institution for the promotion of science and research in the Federal Republic of Germ ...

in 1986 and a number of other recognitions. He is the founding director of the

Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids The Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids (MPI CPfS) (german: Max-Planck-Institut für Chemische Physik fester Stoffe) is a research institute of the Max Planck Society. Located in Dresden, the institute primarily conducts basic res ...

in Dresden, Germany and has also been Vice President of the

(German Research Foundation). Frank Steglich discovered the first

heavy fermion superconductor Heavy fermion superconductors are a type of unconventional superconductor. The first heavy fermion superconductor, CeCu2Si2, was discovered by Frank Steglich in 1978. Since then over 30 heavy fermion superconductors were found (in materials based ...

, CeCu₂Si₂, while working as a research associate in Cologne, Germany in 1979. CeCu₂Si₂ is the first metallic system to be discovered in which the superconductivity is driven by electron-electron interactions, rather than the electron-phonon interaction that is responsible for conventional BCS superconductivity. The discovery of this material revolutionized research into superconductivity, establishing the reality of electronically mediated superconductivity and foreshadowing the discovery of a wide range of heavy electron superconductors, and the subsequent discovery of electronically mediated pairing in cuprates

high temperature superconductors 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 ...

. The first published report of the phenomenon occurred in 1979, by which time Steglich had taken up a faculty position at the University of Darmstadt, and confirmed the existence of bulk superconductivity through the measurement of the specific heat anomaly at the transition temperature of T_c=0.5K. He won the Hewlett-Packard Europhysics Prize and the Gay-Lussac-Humboldt Prize in 1989, the American Physical Society International Prize for New Materials in 1990, the

IUPAP The International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP ) is an international non-governmental organization whose mission is to assist in the worldwide development of physics, to foster international cooperation in physics, and to help in the ...

Magnetism Award in 2000, the Stern-Gerlach Medal in 2004, the Bernd T. Matthias Prize for Superconducting Materials in 2006 and the

Fritz London Memorial Prize The Fritz London Memorial Prize was created to recognize scientists who made outstanding contributions to the advances of the field of Low Temperature Physics. It is traditionally awarded in the first session of the International Conference on Lo ...

in 2020. He is member of several Academies of Sciences and Fellow of the American Physical Society. He received honorary doctorates from the universities of Augsburg, Cologne and Frankfurt/Main as well Kraków (Poland). Since 2012 he is distinguished visiting professor at the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (Beijing) and at Zhejiang University, Hangzhou (China). At the latter school he became founding director of the Center for Correlated Matter (CCM) in 2012.

References

External links

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MPI CPfS page
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize winners Living people 1941 births Commanders Crosses of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany 20th-century German physicists 21st-century German physicists Fellows of the American Physical Society {{Germany-academic-bio-stub