RIP J. Robert Shrieffer

I'm sad to hear the passing of a giant in our field, and certainly in the field of Condensed Matter Physics. Nobel Laureate J. Robert Schrieffer has passed away at the age of 88. He is the "S" in BCS theory of superconductivity, one of the most monumental theories of the last century, and one of the most cited. So "complete" was the theory that, by early 1986, many people thought that the field of superconductivity has been fully "solved", and that nothing new can come out of it. Of course, that got completely changed after that.

Unfortunately, I wasn't aware of his predicament during the last years of Schrieffer's life. I certainly was not aware that he was incarcerated for a while.

Late in life, Dr. Schrieffer’s love of fast cars ended in tragedy. In September 2004, he was driving from San Francisco to Santa Barbara, Calif., when his car, traveling at more than 100 miles per hour, slammed into a van, killing a man and injuring seven other people.

Dr. Schrieffer, whose Florida driver’s license was suspended, pleaded no contest to felony vehicular manslaughter and apologized to the victims and their families. He was sentenced to two years in prison and released after serving one year.

Florida State placed Dr. Schrieffer on leave after the incident, and he retired in 2006.

I've met him only once while I was a graduate student, and he was already at Florida State/NHML at that time. His book and Michael Tinkham's were the two that I used when I decided to go into superconductivity.

Leon Cooper is the only surviving members left of the BCS trio.

Zz.