J.C. Seamus Davis and John Tranquada, physicists at the U.S.
Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, along with
Aharon Kapitulnik of Stanford University, have been named the recipients of
the 2009 Heike Kamerlingh Onnes Prize for outstanding superconductivity experiments.
Named after the winner of the 1913 Nobel Prize in physics for the discovery
of superconductivity and related research, the Onnes Prize is awarded every
three years for outstanding experiments that illuminate the nature of superconductivity
- the disappearance of electrical resistance in certain materials at specific
temperatures, mostly in the range of nearly absolute zero (minus 459.67 degrees
Fahrenheit).
The prize will be presented at the Ninth International Conference on Materials
and Mechanisms of Superconductivity on September 9, in Tokyo. The recipients
will each receive a diploma and share a $5,000 award sponsored by Elsevier,
a publisher of academic journals and books.
J.C. Seamus Davis was cited “for pushing the limits of spectroscopic
imaging scanning tunneling microscopy at low temperatures and applying it to
pioneering studies of the cuprate high-temperature superconductors.”
Davis built a scanning tunneling microscope that can resolve details smaller
than the diameter of an atom, which he uses to study the movement of electrons
in superconducting materials. His insights on how the behavior of electrons
in high-temperature superconductors affects the transition temperature -
the temperature at which a material loses its electrical resistance -
may lead to the discovery of new superconducting materials that are suitable
for applications such as zero-loss energy generation and transmission systems.
“I am delighted and honored to receive this award,” Davis said.
“I will continue to improve and expand the capabilities of the instrument
I built to elucidate the properties of superconductivity.”
Davis earned a B.Sc. in physics from the National University of Ireland in
1983 and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Berkeley (UC
Berkeley), in 1989. After holding a postdoctoral position at UC Berkeley, he
joined the faculty of the university in 1993. In addition, he became a faculty
physicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in 1998. In 2003,
he moved to Cornell University, where he is currently the J.G. White Distinguished
Professor of Physical Sciences. In 2007, he also joined Brookhaven Lab as a
senior physicist, and he became the SUPA Distinguished Research Professor of
Physics at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. In 2009, Davis was named
the Director of the U.S. Department of Energy's Center for Emergent Superconductivity
based at Brookhaven Lab, and he became a visiting professor at the University
of British Columbia, Canada.
A Fellow of the American Physical Society and the Institute of Physics, Davis
has won numerous awards for his work, including the National Science Foundation's
Young Investigator Award and several fellowships. He received the Miller Research
Professorship at UC Berkeley in 1997, the Outstanding Performance Award from
LBNL in 2001, and the Fritz London Memorial Prize in 2005.
John Tranquada was cited “for pioneering neutron scattering experiments
leading to the discovery of the stripe phases in the cuprate high-temperature
superconductors.”
In the 1990s, Tranquada and his colleagues discovered that high-temperature
superconductors have a tendency toward charge segregation, which enables the
coexistence of conducting and insulating properties. This work indicates that
the electronic structure of high-temperature superconductors consists of fluctuating
strings of charge, known as stripes, a concept that is increasingly influencing
the current models of high-temperature superconductors.
“It is a great honor to receive this prize and share it with such excellent
colleagues,” Tranquada said. “My work has built on the contributions
of many researchers at Brookhaven, so this honor is a tribute to them all.”
John Tranquada received a B.A. in physics from Pomona College in 1977 and a
Ph.D. in physics from the University of Washington in 1983. He did postdoctoral
research at Brookhaven's National Synchrotron Light Source from 1983 to
1986, officially joining Brookhaven as an assistant physicist in 1986. He worked
his way through the ranks to become leader of Brookhaven's Neutron Scattering
Group in 1998, and senior physicist in 2000.
A Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for
the Advancement of Science, Tranquada received a U.S. Department of Energy Award
for Outstanding Scientific Accomplishment in Solid State Physics in 1988, Brookhaven
Lab's Research & Development Award in 1997, and the Sustained Research
Prize from the Neutron Scattering Society of America in 2006.