David Lee (physicist)

David Morris Lee
David Morris Lee in 2007
Born	(1931-01-20) January 20, 1931 Rye, New York
Fields	Physics
Institutions	Cornell University Texas A&M University (2009-present)
Alma mater	Yale University University of Connecticut Harvard University
Doctoral advisor	Henry A. Fairbank
Notable awards	Nobel Prize in Physics (1996) Oliver Buckley Prize (1981) Sir Francis Simon Memorial Prize (1976) Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize (1970)
Spouse	Dana (2 children)

David Morris Lee (born January 20, 1931) is an American physicist who shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in Physics with Robert C. Richardson and Douglas Osheroff "for their discovery of superfluidity in helium-3."

Personal life

Lee was born and raised in Rye, New York. His parents, Annette (Franks), a teacher, and Marvin Lee, an electrical engineer, were children of Jewish immigrants from England and Lithuania. He graduated from Harvard University in 1952 and then joined the U.S. Army for 22 months. After being discharged from the army, he obtained a master's degree from the University of Connecticut. In 1955 Lee entered the Ph.D. program at Yale University where he worked under Henry A. Fairbank in the low-temperature physics group, doing experimental research on liquid ³He.

After graduating from Yale in 1959, Lee took a job at Cornell University, where he was responsible for setting up the new Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics. Shortly after arriving at Cornell he met his future wife, Dana, then a PhD student in another department; the couple went on to have two sons.

Lee moved his laboratory from Cornell to Texas A&M University on November 16, 2009.

Work

The work that led to Lee's Nobel Prize was performed in the early 1970s. Lee, together with Robert C. Richardson and graduate student, Doug Osheroff used a Pomeranchuk cell to investigate the behaviour of ³He at temperatures within a few thousandths of a degree of absolute zero. They discovered unexpected effects in their measurements, which they eventually explained as phase transitions to a superfluid phase of ³He. Lee, Richardson and Osheroff were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1996 for this discovery.

Lee's research also covered a number of other topics in low-temperature physics, particularly relating to liquid, solid and superfluid helium (⁴He, ³He and mixtures of the two). Particular discoveries include the antiferromagnetic ordering in solid helium-3, nuclear spin waves in spin polarized atomic hydrogen gas with Jack H. Freed, and the tri-critical point on the phase separation curve of liquid ⁴He-³He, in collaboration with his Cornell colleague John Reppy. His former research group at Cornell currently studies impurity-helium solids.

As well as the Nobel Prize, other prizes won by Lee include the 1976 Sir Francis Simon Memorial Prize of the British Institute of Physics and the 1981 Oliver Buckley Prize of the American Physical Society along with Doug Osheroff and Robert Richardson for their superfluid ³He work.

Lee is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Lee is currently teaching physics at Texas A&M University and continuing his (formerly Cornell-based) research program there as well.

See also

• List of Jewish Nobel laureates
• Timeline of low-temperature technology

External links

• Photograph, Biography and Bibliographic Resources, from the Office of Scientific and Technical Information, United States Department of Energy
• Faculty page at Cornell