Brian David Josephson (born 4 January 1940) is a British theoretical physicist and emeritus professor at the University of Cambridge. He won the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his theoretical predictions of the properties of a supercurrent through a tunnel barrier, in particular those phenomena which are generally known as the Josephson effects.""Brian D. Josephson", Encyclopædia Britannica
Josephson has spent his academic career as a member of the Theory of Condensed Matter Group in Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory. He has been a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, since 1962, and served as Professor of Physics from 1974 until 2007.
In the early 1970s, Josephson took up Transcendental Meditation and turned his attention to issues outside the boundaries of mainstream science. He set up the Mind–Matter Unification Project at the Cavendish to explore the idea of intelligence in nature, the relationship between quantum mechanics and consciousness and the synthesis of science and Eastern mysticism, broadly known as quantum mysticism."Mind–Matter Unification Project (TCM Group, Cavendish Laboratory)", University of Cambridge. Brian Josephson, "Foreword," in Michael A. Thalbourne and Lance Storm (eds.), Parapsychology in the Twenty-First Century: Essays on the Future of Psychical research, McFarland, 2005, pp. 1–2. Brian Josephson, "We Think That We Think Clearly, But That's Only Because We Don't Think Clearly," in Patrick Colm Hogan and Lalita Pandit (eds.), Rabindranath Tagore: Universality and Tradition, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2003, pp. 107–115. Jessica Utts and Brian Josephson, "Do you believe in psychic phenomena? Are they likely to be able to explain consciousness?", Times Higher Education, 8 April 1996. He has expressed support for topics such as parapsychology, water memory and cold fusion, which has made him a focus of criticism from fellow scientists.
Education Brian David Josephson was born on 4 January 1940 in Cardiff, Wales, to Jewish parents, Mimi (née Weisbard) and Abraham Josephson.International Who's Who, 1983–84, Europa Publications Limited, 1983, p. 672. He attended Cardiff High School, where he credits some of the school masters for having helped him, particularly the physics master, Emrys Jones, who introduced him to theoretical physics.Brian Josephson, "Brian Josephson: The Path to the Discovery", Cavendish Laboratory bdj50 conference, University of Cambridge, June 2012, from 8:20 mins. In 1957, he went up to Cambridge, where he initially read mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge. After completing Maths Part II in two years, and finding it somewhat sterile, he decided to switch to physics.John Waldram, "John Waldram: Reminiscences", Lectures from the Cavendish Laboratory's bdj50 conference, University of Cambridge, 18 July 2012, 01:19 mins.
Josephson was known at Cambridge as a brilliant but shy student. Physicist John Waldram recalled overhearing Nicholas Kurti, an examiner from Oxford, discuss Josephson's exam results with David Shoenberg, Reader in Physics at Cambridge, and asking: "Who is this chap Josephson? He seems to be going through the theory like a knife through butter."Waldram 2012, 2:58 mins; for the shyness, Alexei Kojevnikov, "Interview with Dr. Philip Anderson" , Session III, Princeton Physics Department Building, 23 November 1999. While still an undergraduate, he published a paper on the Mössbauer effect, pointing out a crucial issue other researchers had overlooked. According to one eminent physicist speaking to Physics World, he wrote several papers important enough to assure him a place in the history of physics even without his discovery of the Josephson effect.Edwin Cartlidge, "Pioneer of the Paranormal", Physics World, May 2002.
Josephson graduated in 1960, and became a research student in Cambridge's Mond Laboratory on the old Cavendish site, where he was supervised by Brian Pippard.For year of graduation, "Brian D. Josephson", Encyclopædia Britannica; for the Mond Laboratory, Anderson 1970 . American physicist Philip Anderson—also a future Nobel laureate—spent a year in Cambridge in 1961–1962, and recalled that having 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."Philip Anderson, "How Josephson Discovered His Effect" , Physics Today, November 1970. It was during this period, as a PhD student in 1962, that he carried out the research that led to his discovery of the Josephson effect; the Cavendish Laboratory unveiled a plaque on the Mond Building dedicated to the discovery in November 2012."Unveiling of B D Josephson commemorative plaque", University of Cambridge, November 2012. He was elected a Fellow of Trinity College in 1962, and received a Doctor of Philosophy in 1964 for a thesis titled Non-linear conduction in superconductors.For the year of his fellowship, see "Brian D. Josephson", Encyclopædia Britannica. For the thesis, Brian Josephson, "Non-linear conduction in superconductors" , Newton Library Catalogue, University of Cambridge.
Career Josephson spent a postdoctoral year in the United States (1965–1966) as Research Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. After returning to Cambridge, he was made Assistant Director of Research in the Cavendish Laboratory in 1967, where he remained a member of the Theory of Condensed Matter Group for the rest of his career."Cambridge Theory of Condensed Matter group", University of Cambridge, accessed 14 October 2009. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1970, and was awarded a National Science Foundation Fellowship by Cornell University the same year. In 1972, he became Reader in Physics, and in 1974 was appointed Professor of Physics, a position he held until his retirement in 2007."Brian D. Josephson", in Stig Lundqvist (ed.), Nobel Lectures, Physics 1971–1980, World Scientific Publishing Co., 1992.
A practitioner of Transcendental Meditation (TM) since the early 1970s, Josephson became a visiting faculty member in 1975 of the Maharishi European Research University in the Netherlands, part of the TM movement.International Who's Who, 1983–84, Europa Publications Limited, 1983, p. 672; Brian Josephson, "Intelligence and Physics" (lecture), Maharishi European Research University, 21 June 1976. He also held visiting professorships at Wayne State University in 1983, the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in 1984 and the University of Missouri-Rolla in 1987."Brian D. Josephson", in Lundqvist 1992.
Josephson effect
Josephson was 22-years-old when he did the work on quantum tunnelling that earned him the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physics. He discovered that a supercurrent could tunnel through a thin barrier, predicting, according to physicist Andrew Whitaker, that "at a junction of two superconductors, a current will flow even if there is no drop in voltage; that when there is a voltage drop, the current should oscillate at a frequency related to the drop in voltage; and that there is a dependence on any magnetic field."Andrew Whitaker, The New Quantum Age: From Bell's Theorem to Quantum Computation and Teleportation, Oxford University Press, 2012, p. 273. This became known as the Josephson effect and the junction as a Josephson junction.James S. Trefil, "Josephson Effect," The Nature of Science, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2003, p, 225. Also see A Century of Excellence in Measurements, Standards, and Technology, National Institute of Standards and Technology Special Publication, 1988, p. 315ff.
Josephson's calculations were published in Physics Letters (chosen by Pippard because it was a new journal) in a paper titled "Possible new effects in superconductive tunnelling," received on 8 June 1962 and published on 1 July.Also see Brian Josephson, "The History of the Discovery of Weakly Coupled Superconductors," in John Roche (ed.), Physicists Look Back: Studies in the History of Physics, CRC Press, 1990, p. 375. They were confirmed experimentally by Philip Anderson and John Rowell of Bell Labs in Princeton; this appeared in their paper, "Probable Observation of the Josephson Superconducting Tunneling Effect," submitted to Physical Review Letters in January 1963.Philip Anderson and John Rowell, "Probable Observation of the Josephson Superconducting Tunneling Effect", Physical Review Letters, 10(6), 15 March 1963 (received 11 January 1963), pp. 230–232.
Before Anderson and Rowell confirmed the calculations, the American physicist John Bardeen, who had shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics (and who shareed the Prize in 1972), objected to Josephson's work. He submitted an article to Physical Review Letters on 25 July 1962, arguing that "there can be no such superfluid flow." The disagreement led to a confrontation in September that year at Queen Mary College, London, at the Eighth International Conference on Low Temperature Physics. When Bardeen (then one of the most eminent physicists in the world) began speaking, Josephson (still a student) stood up and interrupted him. The men exchanged views, reportedly in a civil and soft-spoken manner.Donald G. McDonald, "The Nobel Laureate Versus the Graduate Student", Physics Today, July 2001, pp. 46–51. Also see Donald G. McDonald, "History of the Josephson Effect" (lecture), IEEE.TV. See also: .
Whitaker writes that the discovery of the Josephson effect led to "much important physics," including the invention of SQUIDs (superconducting quantum interference devices), which are used in geology to make highly sensitive measurements, as well as in medicine and computing.Whitaker 2012, pp. 273–274. Donald G. McDonald, "Superconducting electronics", Physics Today, February 1981. Anthony J. G. Hey and Patrick Walters, The New Quantum Universe, Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 154–155. Gabrielle Walker, "Technology: How SQUIDs were found where crystals meet", New Scientist, 1776, 6 July 1991. Donald G. McDonald, "The Nobel Laureate Versus the Graduate Student", Physics Today, July 2001 (pp. 46–51), p. 51. Alexandre T. Filippov, "Josephson Solitons," The Versatile Soliton, Springer, 2010, p. 213ff. IBM used Josephson's work in 1980 to build a prototype of a computer that would be up to 100 times faster than the IBM 3033 mainframe."Brian D. Josephson", Encyclopædia Britannica: "Applying Josephson's discoveries with superconductors, researchers at International Business Machines Corporation had assembled by 1980 an experimental computer switch structure, which would permit switching speeds from 10 to 100 times faster than those possible with conventional silicon-based chips, increasing data processing capabilities by a vast amount." W. Anacker, "Josephson Computer Technology: A IBM Research Project", IBM Journal of Research and Development, 24(2), March 1980. For speeds, p. 108. H. Nakagawa, et al., "Fabrication process for Josephson computer ETL-JC1 using Nb tunnel junctions", IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, 27(2), 3109–3112, March 1991.