Thomas Maurice Rice (born 26 January 1939 in

Dundalk Dundalk ( ; ga, Dún Dealgan ), meaning "the fort of Dealgan", is the county town (the administrative centre) of County Louth, Ireland. The town is on the Castletown River, which flows into Dundalk Bay on the east coast of Ireland. It is h ...

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

), known professionally as Maurice Rice, is an Irish (and naturalised American) theoretical physicist specializing in

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 ...

Life

Rice is the younger brother of structural engineer

Peter Rice Peter Rice (16 June 1935 – 25 October 1992) was an Irish structural engineer. Born in Dublin, he grew up in 52 Castle Road, Dundalk in County Louth, and spent his childhood between the town of Dundalk, and the villages of Gyles' Quay and ...

. He grew up in 52 Castle Road, Dundalk in County Louth with his two siblings. Like his brother, he studied at the local Christian Brothers school,

Coláiste Rís Coláiste Rís is a secondary school in Dundalk, County Louth, Ireland. It is named in honour of Edmund Rice, the founder of the Irish Christian Brothers. Background 19th Century Coláiste Rís, formerly Dundalk CBS, was established on 10 May ...

. Subsequently he studied physics as an undergraduate at

University College Dublin University College Dublin (commonly referred to as UCD) ( ga, Coláiste na hOllscoile, Baile Átha Cliath) is a public research university in Dublin, Ireland, and a collegiate university, member institution of the National University of Ireland ...

and as a graduate student with

Volker Heine Volker Heine FRS (born 19 September 1930 in Hamburg, Germany) is a New Zealand / British physicist. He is married to Daphne and they have three children. Volker Heine is considered a pioneer of theoretical and computational studies of the electr ...

at the

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

. In 1964, he moved to the US and spent two years as a post-doc with

Walter Kohn Walter Kohn (; March 9, 1923 – April 19, 2016) was an Austrian-American theoretical physicist and theoretical chemist. He was awarded, with John Pople, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1998. The award recognized their contributions to the unde ...

at the

University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Insti ...

. Then he joined the technical staff at

Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...

in 1966, where he stayed until 1981, when he joined the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the

Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (colloquially) , former_name = eidgenössische polytechnische Schule , image = ETHZ.JPG , image_size = , established = , type = Public , budget = CHF 1.896 billion (2021) , rector = Günther Dissertori , president = Joël Mesot , ac ...

(ETH) in Zurich,

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

. Rice and his wife, Helen, moved with their family of a son and two daughters from New Jersey to Zurich. Rice retired from teaching in 2004 and is an Emeritus Professor at ETH.

Career

Rice graduated at a time when the field of condensed matter physics expanded from the study of just simple metals and

semiconductors A semiconductor is a material which has an electrical resistivity and conductivity, electrical conductivity value falling between that of a electrical conductor, conductor, such as copper, and an insulator (electricity), insulator, such as glas ...

to cover a broad range of compound materials. This led him to collaborate with both theorists and experimentalists to analyse the electronic properties of new materials. He joined

in the 1960s and 1970s, studying metal-insulator transitions in transition metal

oxides An oxide () is a chemical compound that contains at least one oxygen atom and one other element in its chemical formula. "Oxide" itself is the dianion of oxygen, an O2– (molecular) ion. with oxygen in the oxidation state of −2. Most of the E ...

, electron-hole liquids in optically pumped semiconductors, and charge and spin density waves. In the early 1980s, Rice moved to

ETH Zurich (colloquially) , former_name = eidgenössische polytechnische Schule , image = ETHZ.JPG , image_size = , established = , type = Public , budget = CHF 1.896 billion (2021) , rector = Günther Dissertori , president = Joël Mesot , ac ...

, a few years before

Georg Bednorz Johannes Georg Bednorz (; born 16 May 1950) is a German physicist who, together with K. Alex Müller, discovered high-temperature superconductivity in ceramics, for which they shared the 1987 Nobel Prize in Physics. Life and work Bednorz was bor ...

and

K. Alex Müller Karl Alexander Müller (20 April 1927 – 9 January 2023) was a Swiss physicist and Nobel laureate. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1987 with Georg Bednorz for their work in superconductivity in ceramic materials. Biography Mülle ...

at the nearby IBM laboratories made their discovery of

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 previo ...

in layered cuprate compounds. Rice switched his research to the challenges posed by these novel superconductors.

Cuprates Cuprate loosely refers to a material that can be viewed as containing anionic copper complexes. Examples include tetrachloridocuprate ( uCl4sup>2−), the superconductor YBa2Cu3O7, and the organocuprates (e.g., dimethylcuprate u(CH3)2sup>� ...

became a major topic in condensed matter physics, as a range of properties in addition to high temperature superconductivity were discovered. Rice and collaborators concentrated on developing a consistent microscopic interpretation of the growing experimental results. One challenge was the microscopic description of the mysterious pseudogap phase, which appears in a range of intermediate hole doping; his research group focused on the role of enhanced Umklapp scattering in a nearly half-filled band as key to the unexpected features.

Brinkman-Rice transition

In 1970, Rice and William F. Brinkman helped to characterize the transition from metal to insulator in

, adding to the Mott-Hubbard approximation. They published a paper addressing the problem of ‘the excitation of two electrons to the outside of the Fermi sea’, in which they modeled approaching the transition from the uncorrelated metallic state, where each orbital is half-filled.

Awards and honours

* D.Sc (h.c.) National University of Ireland (1989) * Honorary Member,

Royal Irish Academy The Royal Irish Academy (RIA; ga, Acadamh Ríoga na hÉireann), based in Dublin, is an academic body that promotes study in the sciences, humanities and social sciences. It is Ireland's premier List of Irish learned societies, learned socie ...

(1988) * Member,

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

(1993) * Fellow of The Royal Society (2002) *

EPS Europhysics Prize The EPS CMD Europhysics Prize is awarded (currently every 2nd year) since 1975 by the Condensed Matter Division of the European Physical Society, in recognition of recent work (completed in the 5 years preceding the attribution of the award) by one ...

(1998) * (2000)

Selected papers

The following papers are Rice's most cited: * * * * *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rice, Thomas Maurice 1939 births Living people People from Dundalk Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Fellows of the Royal Society Members of the Royal Irish Academy Irish emigrants to the United States Irish expatriates in Switzerland American expatriate academics American expatriates in Switzerland Alumni of the University of Cambridge Alumni of University College Dublin Academic staff of ETH Zurich Scientists at Bell Labs Scientists from County Louth 20th-century Irish physicists 21st-century Irish physicists People educated at Coláiste Rís