SUPERCONDUCTIVITY: FROM ELECTRON INTERACTION TO NUCLEAR SUPERFLUIDITY

I present an expanded version of a talk given at the Urbana symposium that celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of the microscopic theory of superconductivity by Bardeen, Cooper, and Schrieffer — BCS. I recall at some length, the work with my Ph.D. mentor, David Bohm, and my postdoctoral mentor, John Bardeen, on electron interaction in metals during the period 1948–55 that helped pave the way for BCS, describe the immediate impact of BCS on a small segment of the Princeton physics community in the early spring of 1957, and discuss the extent to which the Bardeen–Pines–Frohlich effective electron-electron interaction provided a criterion for superconductivity in the periodic system. I describe my lectures on BCS at Niels Bohr's Institute of Theoretical Physics in June 1957 that led to the proposal of nuclear superfluidity, discuss nuclear and cosmic superfluids briefly, and close with a tribute to John Bardeen, whose birth centennial we celebrated in 2008, and who was my mentor, close colleague, and dear friend.