School of Physics Colloquium

I will present a biographical survey of the life and science of Nobel Laureate Philip W. Anderson, arguably the most productive and influential theoretical physicist of the second half of the twentieth century. I will discuss his upbringing in the American Midwest during the Great Depression, his education at Harvard University, his service during WW II, and his subsequent career as a  condensed matter physicist at Bell Laboratories, Cambridge University, and Princeton University. I will sketch the back story for some of his best-known scientific achievements and also for  some of his forays into national and scientific politics. A few remarks about his activities as a public intellectual and his personal life round out the talk.