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Brian D. Josephson
(4 Jan 1940 - )
Welsh physicist who discovered the Josephson effect (1962), a flow of electric current as electron pairs, called Cooper Pairs, between two superconducting materials that are separated by an extremely thin insulator.
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Science Quotes by Brian D. Josephson (2 quotes)
How fascinating it has been for me to watch over the years the many developments in laboratories over the world, which followed from asking one simple question, namely what is the physical significance of broken symmetry in superconductors?
— Brian D. Josephson
Concluding remark of Nobel Lecture, 'The Discovery of Tunnelling Supercurrents' (12 Dec 1973), on nobelprize.org website.
I was fascinated by the idea of broken symmetry, and wondered whether there could be any way of observing it experimentally. … When I learnt of observations suggesting that a supercurrent could flow through a sufficiently thin normal region between two superconductors, … I could see in principle how to calculate the supercurrent, but considered the calculation to be too difficult to be worth attempting.
— Brian D. Josephson
Introductory remark of Nobel Lecture, 'The Discovery of Tunnelling Supercurrents' (12 Dec 1973), on nobelprize.org website.
See also:
- 4 Jan - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Josephson's birth.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
