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Interview With Sir Anthony Leggett, 2003 Nobel Prize Laureate In Physics

By Kourosh Ziabari

19 October, 2012
Countercurrents.org

Sir Anthony James Leggett was born on March 26, 1938 in Camberwell, London , UK . Honored with the Order of British Empire, Leggett is the 2003 Nobel Prize laureate in physics. He is a Professor of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. As one of the most prominent physicists of the 21 st century, Sir Anthony Leggett specializes in the low-temperature physics and was awarded the 2003 Nobel Prize in physics for his extensive research on super-fluidity.

The forbearers of Prof. Leggett's father were cobblers in a small village in Hampshire. However, his father changed this tradition and started working as a greengrocer. His father explains that how he would ride with Anthony to London to buy vegetables and groceries from Covent Garden market and bring to the village to sell. The ancestors of his mother were Irish. Anthony Leggett's father and mother were the first people in the family who had academic education. They got married when both of them were studying at the Institute of Education at the University of London . His father became a physics, chemistry and mathematics teacher at a college and his mother worked for a while as a math instructor; she however abandoned working after Anthony was born.

In December 1954 and when he was only 16 years old he received a scholarship from the Balliol College of Oxford and entered the university with the objective of studying humanities. After a while, however, he entered Oxford 's Merton College to study physics. Dutch physicist Dirk ter Haar ignored his background in humanities and welcomed Anthony as a research student. Dirk was essentially caring about the wellbeing and tranquility of his students and their families and paid a great deal of attention to the fact that they should be given sufficient support and sponsorship, so he encouraged Anthony Leggett to apply for a Prize Fellowship at Magdalen. He successfully won this scholarship from 1963 to 1967. From 1964 to 1965, he studied at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as a post-doctoral student and temporarily worked in a research group at Japan 's Kyoto University under the supervision of Prof. Takeo Matsubara.

Leggett was extremely interested in humanities and particularly philosophy, and says that it was very imminent that he could have become a philosopher; however, he finally become a physicist and is now considered as an iconic figure in the contemporary physics.

What follows is the full text of my interview with Prof. Leggett. The Persian transcript of this interview was published on Daneshmand magazine and the English version is appearing on CounterCurrents for the first time.

Kourosh Ziabari: What impression do you have of your childhood, adolescence and youth days' hobbies and entertainments? Playing chess, digging deep holes in the ground, cycling and hiking and aspiring to become an explorer! Do these activities still motivate you? Do you still think of repeating the experience of those memorable days?

Anthony Leggett: Well, some of them; particularly the chess for which I don't these days have any time, and the hiking. I would like to celebrate my 80th birthday by doing a "classic" hike in Scotland . I am happy to give the digging a miss!

Kourosh Ziabari: As to what I've understood from your writings and from comparison with the writings of the other Nobel Prize laureates whom I've interviewed, you write in a highly literary and eloquent way. Your using of adjectives, adverbs and verbs and your complicated sentence structures indicates this fact. Do you admit my assessment? Is this a dexterity which you acquired by taking English and Latin courses or simply a false perception by someone to whom English is not a mother tongue?

Anthony Leggett:  I would certainly like to think that my writing is adequately literate, and object strongly when copy editors or others attempt to correct it!, and I would attribute this fact, if it is indeed a fact, at least partly to the discipline enforced by having to translate my thoughts from time to time into classical Greek or Latin. There was a general, if unstated, belief in the Oxford classics community that if you can't translate something into Greek, it doesn't really make any sense. But I would have to say that I think that among my colleagues David Mermin and Nobelist Bob Laughlin are both much better writers than me.

Kourosh Ziabari: Please tell us more about your experience in Oxford . I'm sure you recall those days nostalgically. Studying in Oxford is an ambition for many people around the world, and you've had the invaluable opportunity to spend 9 years there. How much did being in Oxford contribute to your future success? What is in Oxford which the other universities in the world lack?

Anthony Leggett: I think that both the personal attention on gets from one's tutors at Oxford , and the general intellectual ambience there, contributed enormously to my later success. One thing I've greatly missed, to a greater or lesser extent, at the universities where I've taught subsequently is the myriad of intellectual activities organized -by the students themselves-,
with no or minimal input from the faculty.

Kourosh Ziabari: You've studied Greek, Latin, philosophy and history but eventually selected the itinerary of physics. Did studying humanities contribute to your scientific career and studies? Have you ever found any linkage and connection between the world of humanities and the world of science?

Anthony Leggett: I don't think that the study of Latin, Greek or history contributed directly though I sometimes joke that at least, unlike some of my physics colleagues, I know the difference between the Greek letters phi and psi!, but I think that my training in philosophy led me, once I became a physicist, to ask certain questions, for example about the meaning of certain "interpretations" of the formalism of quantum mechanics, and more generally to become interested in "foundational" issues. A couple of occasions on which I have made more explicit contact with my old interests are when, a few years ago, I was asked to address the Illinois Classics Teachers' Association on "the value of a classics education for those who end up doing something quite different" (or words to that effect), and more recently when I participated in a workshop on Plato's Timaeus.

Kourosh Ziabari: After getting your philosophy degree, you turned to physics so as to realize your aspirations of studying in a field which is practical and useful. Why physics? What's in physics enthused and attracted you? It was a courageous mission for you, because you hadn't any background knowledge of physics. Am I right?

Anthony Leggett: Yes, you are correct that to all intents and purposes I had no previous knowledge of physics when I made my career choice though I did have some small experience with modern mathematics. I think the attraction was primarily that of a field where (a) unlike in philosophy, one could not only make nontrivial conjectures about the world but have nature or
one's experimental colleagues, prove them right or wrong, and (b) unlike in mathematics, to be wrong does not necessarily mean that one is stupid.

Kourosh Ziabari Both before and after starting your academic career as a university professor, you worked with several tutors and instructors who have surely affected your life positively. What has been the most important and valuable thing which you've learnt from your teachers, aside from the scientific knowledge which they've transferred to you? What have you got from them which you're giving your students today? Something such as a wisdom, an understanding of life?

Anthony Leggett: Probably a respect for intellectual honesty and a readiness to admit when one does not know/understand something; I think the latter is a particularly important quality in a teacher.

Kourosh Ziabari: Please explain for us the characteristics of the low-temperature physics which you specialize in. What are the practical implications of this branch of science? Does it have some external applications which the ordinary people can perceive and realize?

 Anthony Leggett: What sets low temperature physics apart is that one sees the effects of the theory which we believe to describe matter at the atomic level coming out also in the collective behavior of very large numbers of atoms. The most spectacular effects which result are super-fluidity and its analog in an electrically charged system, superconductivity; in these phenomena either single atoms, or pairs of electrons, all behave as one, rather like a platoon of well-drilled soldiers. One result of this is that, unlike normal metals like say copper, a superconductor can transmit electrical energy without dissipating any of it in transit; if superconductivity can be realized at ambient temperature, as many people hope, and perhaps even if it cannot, this may revolutionize the electric grid. In addition superconductors have many applications in medical and other instrumentation e.g. in magnetoencephalography.

Kourosh Ziabari: You won the Nobel Prize in Physics for your pioneering contributions to the theory of superconductors and super-fluids. Would you please summarize, in a simple language, the results of your discoveries and achievements in this field?

Anthony Leggett: The contribution which the Nobel committee cited in my case was my work on (what we now call) super-fluid 3-He.The light isotope of helium (3-He) remains liquid under its own vapor pressure down to the lowest temperatures reached, and since in many ways 3-He atoms (unlike their heavier 4-He cousins) behave much like electrons ,it had been predicted since 1959 that a "super-fluid" phase, analogous to the superconducting phase which occurs in some metals, might manifest itself at sufficiently low temperatures; however, experiments down to 3 mK (about one hundred-thousandth of room temperature) had failed to find it. In the spring of 1972 the experimental low-temperature group at Cornell University in the US were doing so-called nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) experiments on liquid 3-He at somewhat lower temperatures, and found some extremely puzzling results-so puzzling that when I first heard about them, I seriously considered the possibility that  quantum mechanics was breaking down. However, by exploiting the idea (which at the time was not so widely appreciated) that if the previous predictions of a super-fluid phase were correct then the pairs of 3-He atoms, like the pairs of electrons in a superconductor, would behave like a platoon of well-drilled soldiers, I was eventually able not only to explain the existing NMR experiments but to propose others of a different type; when these were done they confirmed my predictions, and moreover helped to establish the detailed nature of the paired states, actually three different ones, which were observed experimentally.

Kourosh Ziabari: You're affiliated with several international organizations and I think your membership in the American Philosophical Society is one of the most interesting cases among them. Isn't it wonderful that the 2003 Nobel Prize Laureate in physics is the member of a philosophical society?

Anthony Leggett: Well, actually, no. The "philosophical" in the title is of only historical significance; the membership of the APS comprises all areas of the arts and sciences, much like that of the AAAS of which I am also a member.

Kourosh Ziabari: You've had the honor to be knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for your services to physics. Did the precious title "sir" come to you as a surprise? Had you ever thought of such an honor? What's your viewpoint about it? Which one is more valuable to you, the Nobel Prize or the title "sir"?

Anthony Leggett: Frankly, my impression is that the "sir" always sounds vaguely ridiculous outside the UK ! It's particularly irritating when people address me as "Sir Leggett", since in the UK one would use only "Sir Anthony Leggett".Of course I appreciate the knighthood, as do my young grand-nephews, who expect me to do my bit in slaying the odd dragon! but I strongly suspect that it wouldn't have happened without the prize.

Kourosh Ziabari: You're credited with shaping the theoretical understanding of normal and super-fluid helium liquids and other strongly coupled super-fluids. What's the importance of understanding the activity of helium liquids?

Anthony Leggett: In itself for practical purposes, very little; I sometimes say that from a purely practical point of view, super-fluid 3-He is probably the most useless system ever discovered by mankind! However, it is of great theoretical significance; at least at the time of their discovery and for some years thereafter, the new phases of 3-He were probably the most sophisticated physical systems of which we can claim a quantitative understanding, and ideas developed in that context have proved invaluable in understanding "strongly coupled" super-fluids which may be of much greater practical importance, such as the high-temperature (cuprate) superconductors.



Kourosh Ziabari: In your background, one can find both theoretical and experimental studies. Do the students today follow theoretical physics enthusiastically? As a teacher, how to you make theoretical physics interesting and attractive for the students?

Anthony Leggett: I didn't in fact do much experimental work myself, even as an undergraduate student in Oxford . I sometimes wish I had done more. I think theoretical physics is indeed attractive to many, perhaps too many students at the graduate level, but there is a strong tendency (which I also experienced at this stage) to become fascinated by fancy theoretical formalisms at the expense of physical understanding. In my teaching I always try to give the simplest possible explanation of the phenomena I am discussing, provided of course that it isn't oversimplified to the point of becoming misleading.

Kourosh Ziabari: Would you please explain for us the details of your studies on super-fluidity and phase coherence in very degenerate atomic gases? What results have you come to so far?

Anthony Leggett: It's really pretty difficult to explain this in lay terms. Moreover, my most-cited article in this field is actually a review of other people's work. I think that the best summary I can give of the significance of the field is that there are many very fascinating experiments which we could not do on our "old" bosonic super-fluid, liquid 4-He, which we can now do on the very degenerate atomic gases and which display spectacularly the effects of their "marching-in-step" behavior.

Kourosh Ziabari: I haven't heard or read your 2010 speech to the Zhejiang University; however, its title suggests that it should be very interesting. You said that quantum physics has succeeded in describing the nature in atomic level. How is it possible? Would you please elaborate on that?

Anthony Leggett: I think the simplest answer I can give to this question is to refer you to the text of the talk at the URL:  http://people.physics.illinois.edu/Leggett/B1.pdf

Kourosh Ziabari: What's your viewpoint regarding the Nobel Prize? Has your life changed since you won the Nobel Prize in Physics? Has it ever been your wish to become a Nobel Prize laureate one day? Had you ever thought of winning a Nobel Prize? Is the life of a Nobel Prize laureate different from the other scientists?

Anthony Leggett: I was never that worried about whether or not I might get the prize though after hearing the odd lecture from existing laureates I concluded it was not impossible! The main difference it has made is that I now regularly get asked to express my opinion publicly on issues on which I am not sufficiently informed to have an opinion.

Kourosh Ziabari: What's your message to the readers of this interview and those who are enthusiastically following our conversation?

Anthony Leggett:

1. Follow your curiosity, and don't worry if those around you think the question you are asking is stupid or the solution obvious.

2. Don't worry too much about whether the question which intrigues you has been "solved" in the existing literature-try to work out your own solution anyway.

3. Don't think that any piece of honestly conducted research is ever wasted-even if it seems so at the time, write it up carefully, put it away in a drawer and I would bet that 10 or 20 years down the road it will come back and help you out.

4. If you are in academic life, at whatever level, take your teaching just as seriously as you take your research, if not more so.

5. Finally, above all, try to do good teaching and honest research, and don't worry about priorities or prizes!

Kourosh Ziabari is an Iranian journalist

 




 

 


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