Name Brian Pippard Role Physicist | Awards Hughes Medal | |
 | ||
Born 7 September 1920
Earl's Court, London ( 1920-09-07 ) Institutions University of Cambridge Notable awards Fellow of the Royal Society
Hughes Medal (1960) Died September 21, 2008, Cambridge Education Clifton College, Clare Hall, Cambridge Notable students Brian Josephson, Allan Mackintosh Books Elements of Classical Thermod, Magnetoresistance in metals, The physics of vibration, Response and stability, The dynamics of conduc Similar People Brian Josephson, Abraham Pais, Philip Warren Anderson | ||
Interview with Brian Pippard, Part 2 of 2
Sir Alfred Brian Pippard, FRS (7 September 1920 – 21 September 2008), was a British physicist. He was Cavendish Professor of Physics from 1971 until 1984 and an Honorary Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge, of which he was the first President. He was educated at Clifton College.
Contents
Biography
Pippard demonstrated the reality, as opposed to the mere abstract concept, of Fermi surfaces in metals by establishing the shape of the Fermi surface of copper through measuring the reflection and absorption of microwave electromagnetic radiation (see the anomalous skin effect). He also introduced the notion of coherence length in superconductors in his proposal for the non-local generalisation of the Londons' equations concerning electrodynamics in superfluids and superconductors. The non-local kernel proposed by Pippard, inferred on the basis of Chambers' non-local generalisation of Ohm's law) can be deduced within the framework of the BCS (Bardeen, Cooper and Schrieffer) theory of superconductivity (a comprehensive description of the details of the London-Pippard theory can be found in the book by Fetter and Walecka).
Pippard was the author of Elements of Classical Thermodynamics for Advanced Students of Physics, Dynamics of Conduction Electrons, and The Physics of Vibration. He is also a co-author of the three-volumes encyclopaedia Twentieth Century Physics. As the Cavendish Professor of Physics at Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, he complied Cavendish Problems in Classical Physics, based in large part on past examination questions for Cambridge physics students.
Pippard was the doctoral supervisor of Brian David Josephson (awarded PhD in Physics in 1964) who in 1973 received the Nobel Prize in Physics (together with Leo Esaki and Ivar Giaever) for his discovery of what is known as the Josephson effect.