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Douglas D. Osheroff - Superfluid Helium-3

Author: Jackie DiGiovanni
Published on: Jun 29, 2005

Douglas D. Osheroff - Superfluid Helium-3

Douglas Osheroff was born in Aberdeen, Washington. His father was a doctor and his mother was a nurse. He developed an early interest in science. At age six, he would take apart his toys to study the electric motors inside. In high school, he built an X-ray machine from used parts. He enjoyed physics and chemistry classes.

Osheroff enrolled at California Tech where he found classes challenging. Osheroff writes:

Years later, when Caltech was offering me a faculty position, I confided that I did not have a very illustrious career as an undergraduate. To this remark the division chair replied "That's OK Doug, we are not hiring you to be an undergraduate."

During his senior year, he worked in David Goodstein's low temperature laboratory, and he became fascinated with the physics of low temperatures. He graduated in 1967 with a BS and was accepted for graduate studies at Cornell. He worked with David Lee, in the low temperature laboratory. And he met Phyllis Liu, whom he would later marry. He received a Ph.D. in 1973.

In November, 1971, working late in the lab, Osheroff noted unexpected behavior in a helium-3 experiment. After taking careful notes and replicating his results, he phoned his advisors, at 3 in the morning, and they knew they had found the conditions at which helium-3 changes to a superfluid, a liquid that moves with almost no resistance. He would later share the Nobel Prize in Physics for this discovery.

Lee had encouraged him to stay in contact with recruiters from AT&T Bell Labs, and he was offered a job in 1972. He and his wife moved to New Jersey, were she began postdoctoral work at Princeton. Osheroff enjoyed the atmosphere at Bell Labs, where the requirement was that the work be "good physics," and he continued his research in superfluidity in helium-3. His work also produced many successes in solid helium-3 research. He became head of the Solid State and Low Temperature Research Department in 1981.

Osheroff left Bell Labs in 1987, partly because his wife had been offered a great job in California, and joined the faculty at Stanford as Professor of Physics and Applied Physics. She encouraged him to devote his energy to teaching. He taught classes and worked with graduate students on both superfluid and solid helium-3. Osheroff won the Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1991, and was chair of the Physics Department from 1993 to 1996. He and his students continue to do research in helium-3 as well as glassy materials.

Osheroff was named the J. G. Jackson and C. J. Wood Professor of Physics in 1992.

Honors and Awards

Sources

http://www.stanford.edu/dept/physics/people/nobel/osheroff.html

http://www.floridatoday.com/columbia/mishapboard/osheroff.htm

http://www.hertzfndn.org/osheroff.shtml

http://www.physics.dal.ca/Osheroff.html

http://www.bell-labs.com/news/1996/october/10/1.html

http://nobelprize.org/physics/laureates/1996/osheroff-autobio.html

http://www-leland.stanford.edu/dept/news/relaged/961021osheroff.html

http://www.stanford.edu/dept/physics/people/faculty/osheroff_douglas.html

http://citadel.edu/pao/newsreleases/archives/spring99/osheroff.html