Condensed Matter Physics

Below are the three physicists who famous for receiving nobel in 2003, concerning "for pioneering contributions to the theory of superconductors and superfluids".

Alexei Alexeyevich Abrikosov (Russian: Алексе́й Алексе́евич Абрико́сов) (born June 25, 1928) is a Russian theoretical physicist. Abrikosov was born in Moscow, Russian SFSR, USSR, on June 25, 1928, to a couple of physicians: Prof. Alexei Ivanovich Abrikosov and Dr. Fani Abrikosova, née Wulf. He graduated from Moscow State University in 1948. From 1948 to 1965, he worked at the Institute for Physical Problems of the USSR Academy of Sciences, where he received his Ph.D. in 1951 for the theory of thermal diffusion in plasmas, and then his Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences degree in 1955 for a thesis on quantum electrodynamics at high energies. From 1965 to 1988, he worked at the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics (USSR Academy of Sciences). He has been a professor atMoscow State University since 1965, and served as an academician at the USSR Academy of Sciences from 1987 to 1991. In 1991, he became an academician at the Russian Academy of Sciences.

In 1952, Abrikosov discovered the way in which magnetic flux can penetrate a superconductor. The phenomenon is known as type-II superconductivity, and the accompanying arrangement of magnetic flux lines is called the Abrikosov vortex lattice.

Since 1991, he has been working in the Materials Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois on a contract basis. Abrikosov is an Argonne Distinguished Scientist at the Condensed Matter Theory Group in Argonne’s Materials Science Division. His recent research at Argonne National Laboratory has focused on the origins of magnetoresistance, a property of some materials that change their resistance to electrical flow under the influence of a magnetic field.

Vitaly Lazarevich Ginzburg (Russian: Вита́лий Ла́заревич Ги́нзбург; October 4, 1916 – November 8, 2009) was a Russian theoretical physicist, astrophysicist, Nobel laureate, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and one of the fathers of Soviet hydrogen bomb.^[1][2] He was the successor to Igor Tamm as head of the Department of Theoretical Physics of the Academy's physics institute (FIAN), and an outspoken atheist.

He was born to a Jewish family in Moscow in 1916, and graduated from the Physics Faculty of Moscow State University in 1938. He defended his candidate's (Ph.D.) dissertation in 1940, and his doctor's dissertation in 1942. He worked at the P. N. Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow from 1940. Among his achievements are a partially phenomenological theory of superconductivity, the Ginzburg-Landau theory, developed with Landau in 1950; the theory of electromagnetic wave propagation in plasmas (for example, in theionosphere); and a theory of the origin of cosmic radiation. He is also known to biologists as being part of the group of scientists that helped bring down the reign of the politically connected anti-Mendelian agronomist Trofim Lysenko, thus allowing modern genetic scienceto return to the USSR.

Ginzburg was the editor-in-chief of the scientific journal Uspekhi Fizicheskikh Nauk. He also headed the Academic Department of Physics and Astrophysics Problems, which Ginzburg founded at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in 1968.

Sir Anthony James Leggett, KBE, FRS (born 26 March 1938, Camberwell, London, UK), aka Tony Leggett, has been aProfessor of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign since 1983.^[1]

Professor Leggett is widely recognized as a world leader in the theory of low-temperature physics, and his pioneering work onsuperfluidity was recognized by the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physics.^[2] He has shaped the theoretical understanding of normal and superfluid helium liquids and strongly coupled superfluids^[3]. He set directions for research in the quantum physics of macroscopicdissipative systems and use of condensed systems to test the foundations of quantum mechanics^[4]. He has been particularly interested in the possibility of using special condensed-matter systems, such as Josephson devices, to test the validity of the extrapolation of the quantum formalism to the macroscopic level; this interest has led to a considerable amount of technical work on the application of quantum mechanics to collective variables and in particular on ways of incorporating dissipation into the calculations. He is also interested in the theory of superfluid liquid 3He, especially under extreme non-equilibrium conditions, in high-temperature superconductivity, and in the newly realized system of Bose-condensed atomic gases.