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PROFESSOR
SIR ANTHONY LEGGETT
Professor Sir
Anthony Leggett is John D. and Catherine
T. MacArthur Professor of Physics at the
University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign. He is widely recognized
as a world leader in the theory of
low-temperature physics, and he shared the
2003 Nobel Prize in Physics for his
pioneering work on superfluidity. He has
shaped the theoretical understanding of
normal and superfluid helium liquids and
other strongly coupled superfluids; and
has set directions for research in the
quantum physics of macroscopic systems,
and the use of condensed systems to test
the foundations of quantum mechanics.
Professor Leggett was born in Camberwell,
South London. He studied at Oxford,
reading Classics and Philosophy for his
first BA, before completing a second BA
and then a doctorate in Physics. He held
research fellowships at Oxford and
Illinois, and taught at the University of
Sussex, before taking up his current
MacArthur Chair in 1983.
Among many honours and distinctions,
Professor Leggett is a Fellow of the Royal
Society and an Honorary Fellow of the
Institute of Physics in the UK; a Fellow
of the American Physical Society and a
Member of the National Academy of
Sciences, the American Philosophical
Society, and the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences, in the US; and a Foreign
Member of the Russian Academy of
Sciences. He is a recipient of the
Maxwell Medal (1975), the Paul Dirac Medal
(1992) and the Wolf Prize (2003), and was
awarded a knighthood in the Queen's
Birthday Honours List in 2004, for
services to physics.
Professor Leggett will be discussing the
issue of the application of quantum
mechanics to everyday phenomena. In his
words: "Quantum mechanics has been
enormously successful in describing nature
at the atomic level, and most physicists
believe that it is in principle the 'whole
truth' about the world, even at the
everyday level. But such a view leads to a
severe problem: in certain circumstances,
the most natural interpretation of the
theory implies that no definite outcome of
an experiment occurs until the act of
'observation'."
Professor Leggett will explain how, for
many decades, this problem was regarded as
'merely philosophical' by many physicists,
having no testable consequences. In recent
years, however, the situation has changed
very dramatically. Professor Leggett will
discuss the problem; some popular attempts
to resolve it; the current experimental
situation; and prospects for the
future.
Professor Leggett is visiting Sydney as
guest of the Centre for Time, in the
Department of Philosophy, School of
Philosophical and Historical Inquiry,
University of Sydney.
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