J. David Jackson (January 19, 1925–May 20, 2016): A Biographical Memoir

John David (“Dave”) Jackson, a Canadian-born theoretical physicist, contributed significantly to particle, nuclear, and atomic physics. He is best known, however, for his text Classical Electrodynamics, which has been a fixture in physics graduate education around the world for more than 50 years. It is generally referred to simply as “Jackson.” This textbook, which has inspired fear and wonder alike in generations of students, clearly reflects the author's fascination with physical phenomena, his renowned mathematical dexterity, and his appreciation of the elegance of physical laws. Jackson's major contributions to research included the theory of muon-catalyzed fusion; the analysis, with Kurt Gottfried, of angular distributions in quasi-two-body elementary particle collisions; and the elucidation of charmonium-state decays. Jackson influenced the development of physics research throughout the United States as well as internationally—particularly through his work on the nascent Superconducting Super Collider. An active promoter of civil liberties and human rights, he was one of the leaders of the efforts to free Andrei Sakharov, Yuri Orlov, and Anatoly Shcharansky from Soviet imprisonment.

The Pope of Condensed Matter Physics

This chapter gives an overview of Anderson’s life at the top of the theoretical condensed matter world. He became very influential at Bell Labs and retired as a Consulting Director of the Physical Science Laboratory. He moved his half-time professorship from Cambridge to Princeton in 1975, but it took a decade to break down the resistance there to condensed matter physics. He was heavily involved with the Aspen Center and turned down an offer of the Directorship of the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara. He wrote the magisterial “Basic Notions of Condensed Matter Physics” but was widely regarded as a poor classroom instructor. His Nobel Prize gave him a platform to oppose the ABM and Star Wars ballistic missile systems, and the Superconducting Super Collider.

A Mind Over Matter

Philip W. Anderson (1923–2020) is widely regarded as one of the most accomplished and influential physicists of the second half of the twentieth century. Educated at Harvard, he served during World War II as a radar engineer, and began a thirty-five year career at Bell Laboratories in 1949. He was soon recognized as one of the pre-eminent theoretical physicists in the world, specializing in understanding the collective behavior of the vast number of atoms and electrons in a sample of solid matter. He won a one-third share of the 1977 Nobel Prize for Physics for his discovery of a phenomenon common to all waves in disordered matter called Anderson localization and the development of the Anderson impurity model to study magnetism. At Cambridge and Princeton Universities, Anderson led the way in transforming solid-state physics into the deep, subtle, and coherent discipline known today as condensed matter physics. He developed the concepts of broken symmetry and emergence and championed the concept of complexity as an organizing principle to attack difficult problems inside and outside physics. In 1971, Anderson was the first scientist to challenge the claim of high-energy particle physicists that their work was the most deserving of federal funding. Later, he testified before Congress opposing the Superconducting Super Collider particle accelerator. Anderson was a dominant figure in his field for almost fifty years. At an age when most scientists think about retirement, he made a brilliant contribution to many-electron theory and applied it to a novel class of high-temperature superconductors.