Philip Warren Anderson (December 13, 1923 – March 29, 2020) was an American theoretical physicist and

Nobel laureate The Nobel Prizes ( sv, Nobelpriset, no, Nobelprisen) are awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Academy, the Karolinska Institutet, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals and organizations who make out ...

. Anderson made contributions to the theories of

localization Localization or localisation may refer to: Biology * Localization of function, locating psychological functions in the brain or nervous system; see Linguistic intelligence * Localization of sensation, ability to tell what part of the body is a ...

, antiferromagnetism, symmetry breaking (including a paper in 1962 discussing symmetry breaking in particle physics, leading to the development of the

Standard Model The Standard Model of particle physics is the theory describing three of the four known fundamental forces (electromagnetism, electromagnetic, weak interaction, weak and strong interactions - excluding gravity) in the universe and classifying a ...

around 10 years later), and high-temperature superconductivity, and to the philosophy of science through his writings on

emergent phenomena In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence occurs when an entity is observed to have properties its parts do not have on their own, properties or behaviors that emerge only when the parts interact in a wider whole. Emergence ...

. Anderson is also responsible for naming the field of physics that is now known as

condensed matter physics Condensed matter physics is the field of physics that deals with the macroscopic and microscopic physical properties of matter, especially the solid and liquid phases which arise from electromagnetic forces between atoms. More generally, the sub ...

Education and early life

Anderson was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, and grew up in Urbana, Illinois. His father, Harry Warren Anderson, was a professor of plant pathology at the University of Illinois at Urbana; his maternal grandfather was a mathematician at Wabash College, where Anderson's father studied; and his maternal uncle was a

Rhodes Scholar The Rhodes Scholarship is an international postgraduate award for students to study at the University of Oxford, in the United Kingdom. Established in 1902, it is the oldest graduate scholarship in the world. It is considered among the world' ...

who became a professor of English, also at Wabash College. He graduated from University Laboratory High School in Urbana in 1940. Under the encouragement of a math teacher by the name of Miles Hartley, Anderson enrolled at Harvard University to study under a fully-funded scholarship. He concentrated in "Electronic Physics" and completed his B.S. in 1943, after which he was drafted into the war effort and built antennas at the

Naval Research Laboratory The United States Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) is the corporate research laboratory for the United States Navy and the United States Marine Corps. It was founded in 1923 and conducts basic scientific research, applied research, technological ...

until the end of the Second World War in 1945. As an undergraduate, his close associates included particle-nuclear physicist

H. Pierre Noyes H. Pierre Noyes (December 10, 1923 – September 30, 2016) was an American theoretical physicist. He became a member of the faculty at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford University in 1962. Noyes specialized in several areas o ...

, philosopher and historian of science Thomas Kuhn and molecular physicist Henry Silsbee. After the war, Anderson returned to Harvard to pursue graduate studies in physics under the mentorship of John Hasbrouck van Vleck; he received his Ph.D. in 1949 after completing a doctoral dissertation titled "The theory of pressure broadening of spectral lines in the microwave and infrared regions."

Career and research

From 1949 to 1984, Anderson was employed by Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, where he worked on a wide variety of problems in

. During this period he developed what is now called Anderson localization (the idea that extended states can be localized by the presence of disorder in a system) and

Anderson's theorem In mathematics, Anderson's theorem is a result in real analysis and geometry which says that the integral of an integrable, symmetric, unimodal, non-negative function ''f'' over an ''n''-dimensional convex body ''K'' does not decrease if ''K'' is ...

(concerning impurity scattering in superconductors); invented the Anderson Hamiltonian, which describes the site-wise interaction of electrons in a transition metal; proposed symmetry breaking within particle physics (this played a role in the development of the

and the development of the theory behind the Higgs mechanism, which in turn generates mass in some elementary particles); created the pseudospin approach to the BCS theory of

superconductivity Superconductivity is a set of physical properties observed in certain materials where electrical resistance vanishes and magnetic flux fields are expelled from the material. Any material exhibiting these properties is a superconductor. Unlike ...

; made seminal studies of non-s-wave pairing (both symmetry-breaking and microscopic mechanism) in the superfluidity of He3, and helped found the area of spin-glasses. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1963. Anderson spent a year as

Lecturer Lecturer is an List of academic ranks, academic rank within many universities, though the meaning of the term varies somewhat from country to country. It generally denotes an academic expert who is hired to teach on a full- or part-time basis. T ...

in Cambridge in 1961–1962, and recalled that having Brian Josephson in a class was "a disconcerting experience for a lecturer, I can assure you, because everything had to be right or he would come up and explain it to me after class." Anderson was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1963. From 1967 to 1975, Anderson was a professor of theoretical physics at Cambridge University. In 1977 Anderson was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his investigations into the electronic structure of magnetic and disordered systems, which allowed for the development of electronic switching and memory devices in computers. Co-researchers Sir Nevill Francis Mott and

John van Vleck John Hasbrouck Van Vleck (March 13, 1899 – October 27, 1980) was an American physicist and mathematician. He was co-awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1977, for his contributions to the understanding of the behavior of electronic magnetism ...

shared the award with him. In 1982, he was awarded the National Medal of Science. He retired from Bell Labs in 1984 and was

Joseph Henry Joseph Henry (December 17, 1797– May 13, 1878) was an American scientist who served as the first Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. He was the secretary for the National Institute for the Promotion of Science, a precursor of the Smith ...

Professor Emeritus of Physics at Princeton University. Anderson's writings included ''Concepts in Solids'', ''Basic Notions of Condensed Matter Physics'' and ''The Theory of Superconductivity in the High-Tc Cuprates''. Anderson served on the board of advisors of

Scientists and Engineers for America Scientists and Engineers for America (SEA) was an organization focused on promoting sound science in American government, and supporting candidates who understand science and its applications. SEA was formed on September 27, 2006, and describes it ...

, an organization focused on promoting sound science in American government. In response to the discovery of high-temperature superconductors in 1980s, Anderson proposed Resonating valence bond (RVB) theory to explain the phenomenon. While many found the idea unconvincing, RVB theory proved instrumental in the study of spin liquids. Anderson also made conceptual contributions to the philosophy of science through his explication of

, which became an inspiration for the science of complex systems. In 1972 he wrote an article called "More is Different" in which he emphasized the limitations of reductionism and the existence of hierarchical levels of science, each of which requires its own fundamental principles for advancement. In 1984 he participated in the founding workshops of the Santa Fe Institute, a multidisciplinary research institute dedicated to the science of complex systems. Anderson also co-chaired the institute's 1987 conference on economics with Kenneth Arrow and

W. Brian Arthur William Brian Arthur (born 31 July 1945) is an economist credited with developing the modern approach to increasing returns. He has lived and worked in Northern California for many years. He is an authority on economics in relation to complexi ...

, and participated in its 2007 workshop on models of emergent behavior in complex systems. In 1987, Anderson testified to the US Congress, "against the construction of the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC), a 40 TeV proton-proton collider in Texas that would have been the biggest experiment in particle physics. Anderson's opposition to the SSC did not directly lead to its cancellation in 1993—spiralling costs were the main factor - but he was perhaps its most high-profile opponent." He was, "skeptical of the supposed boost it would provide to science in the US and the claim that the spin-offs would provide great return on investment." A 2006 statistical analysis of scientific research papers by José Soler, comparing the number of references in a paper to the number of citations, declared Anderson to be the "most creative" amongst ten most cited physicists in the world. In 2021 Oxford University Press published the biography ''A Mind over Matter: Philip Anderson and the Physics of the Very Many'' by Andrew Zangwill.

Awards and honors

He was awarded the Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize in 1964, the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1977, the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement in 1978, was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 1980, and was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1991. He was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1982.

Personal life

Anderson was an

atheist Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no ...

and was one of 22 Nobel Laureates who signed the Humanist Manifesto. Anderson was also interested in Japanese culture, living there for a time and becoming a 1st

Dan Dan or DAN may refer to: People * Dan (name), including a list of people with the name ** Dan (king), several kings of Denmark * Dan people, an ethnic group located in West Africa **Dan language, a Mande language spoken primarily in Côte d'Ivoir ...

master of the board game Go. The Nihon Ki-in awarded him a lifetime achievement award in 2007, and Anderson joked that there were only four people in Japan who could beat him. He died in Princeton, New Jersey, on March 29, 2020, at the age of 96.

Publications

Books

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Journal articles

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