Leon N Cooper | |
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Cooper in 2007
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Born |
Bronx, New York, United States |
February 28, 1930
Residence | United States |
Nationality | American |
Fields | Physics |
Institutions | Brown University |
Alma mater | Columbia University |
Doctoral advisor | Robert Serber |
Doctoral students |
Elie Bienenstock Paul Munro Nathan Intrator Omer Artun Michael Perrone Alan Saul |
Known for |
Superconductivity Cooper pairs |
Notable awards | Nobel Prize in Physics (1972) (1968) |
Leon N Cooper (born February 28, 1930) is an American physicist and Nobel Prize laureate, who with John Bardeen and John Robert Schrieffer, developed the BCS theory of superconductivity. He is also the namesake of the Cooper pair and co-developer of the BCM theory of synaptic plasticity.
Cooper graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in 1947 and received a B.A. in 1951,M.A. in 1953, and Ph.D. in 1954 from Columbia University. He spent a year at the Institute for Advanced Study and taught at the University of Illinois and Ohio State University before coming to Brown University in 1958. He is the Thomas J. Watson, Sr. Professor of Science at Brown, and Director of the Institute for Brain and Neural Systems.
He has carried out research at various institutions including the Institute for Advanced Study, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland.
The character Sheldon Cooper, featured in the CBS comedy The Big Bang Theory, is named in part after Leon Cooper.