A Mind Over Matter

Philip Anderson and the Physics of the Very Many

Andrew Zangwill

In depth study of Philip Anderson's work and life
First book of its time about solid-state physics or physicists
Easy to understand with explanations of physics for all readers
Richly illustrated

A Mind Over Matter

Philip Anderson and the Physics of the Very Many

Andrew Zangwill

Description

A Mind Over Matter is a biography of the Nobel-prize winner Philip W. Anderson, a person widely regarded as one of the most accomplished and influential physicists of the second half of the twentieth century.

Anderson (1923-2020) was a theoretician who specialized in the physics of matter, including window glass and metals, magnets and semiconductors, liquid crystals and superconductors. More than any other single person, Anderson transformed the patchwork subject of solid-state physics into the deep, subtle, and coherent discipline known today as condensed matter physics.

Among his many world-class research achievements, Anderson discovered an aspect of wave physics that had been missed by all previous scientists going back to Isaac Newton. He became a public figure when he testified before Congress to oppose its funding of an expensive project intended exclusively for particle physics research. Over the years, he published many articles designed to influence a broad audience about issues where science impacted public policy and culture.

Anderson grew up in the American mid-west, was educated at Harvard, and rose to the pinnacle of his profession during the first decade of his thirty-five career as a theoretical physicist at Bell Telephone Laboratories. Almost uniquely, he spent many years working half-time as a professor at the University of Cambridge and at Princeton University. The outspoken Anderson enjoyed broad influence outside of physics when he helped develop and champion the concepts of emergence and complexity as organizing principles to help attack very difficult problems in technically challenging disciplines.

A Mind Over Matter

Philip Anderson and the Physics of the Very Many

Andrew Zangwill

Prologue
1:Introduction
2:Son of the Heartland
3:Making Waves
4:First Fruits
5:A Solid Beginning
6:Breaking Symmetry
7:Disorderly Conduct
8:Law in Disorder
9:The Love of His Life
10:The Cantabrigian
11:Hidden Moments
12:From Emergence to Complexity
13:The Pope of Condensed Matter
14:The Problem of a Lifetime
15:Four Facts about Science
16:Conclusion
Acknowledgments

A Mind Over Matter

Philip Anderson and the Physics of the Very Many

Andrew Zangwill

Author Information

Andrew Zangwill, Professor of Physics, School of Physics, Georgia Institute of Technology

Professor Zangwill earned a B.S. in Physics at Carnegie-Mellon University in 1976. His 1981 PhD in Physics at the University of Pennsylvania introduced the time-dependent density functional method. He worked at Brookhaven National Laboratory and the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn from 1981-1985 before taking up his present position at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1997 for theoretical studies of epitaxial crystal growth. He is the author of the monograph Physics at Surfaces (1988) and the graduate textbook Modern Electrodynamics (2013). In 2013, he began publishing scholarly work on the history of condensed matter physics.

A Mind Over Matter

Philip Anderson and the Physics of the Very Many

Andrew Zangwill

Reviews and Awards

"A lucid biography of one of the great twentieth-century scientists, and also a skeleton-key for readers interested in the physics of complex systems." - David Kordahl, 3 Quarks Daily

"Zangwill's well-written and engaging A Mind Over Matter is an important book of interest not only to physicists but also to many historians and philosophers of science." - Helge Kragh, Metascience

"Zangwill has done an admirable job in capturing the character of Anderson, accurately depicting his flaws as well as his enormous strengths. Moreover, the book is very well written [...]. It should clearly be of great interest to anyone who has done research in the area of condensed matter physics, or has seriously studied that subject. But it should also be of interest to many others, including people with a broad interest in the history of science and the evolution of physics in the second half of the twentieth century." - Bertrand Halperin, Harvard University

"The book is great, extremely interesting and well written. It should appeal to thinking scientists and academics quite widely, and it captures the spirit of a leading figure in theoretical physics. In particular I like the discussion of Anderson's 'style' of doing theoretical physics in line with his whole ethos and what he thinks science is about." - Volker Heine, Cambridge University

"Well-researched, nicely balanced and refreshingly non-hagiographic." - Anthony Leggett, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign