President Diana Natalicio
and
Anny Morrobel-Sosa
Dean of the College of Science
cordially invite you to attend
a special UTEP lecture
�How Advances in Science Are Made�
Douglas Osheroff
J.G. Jackson and C.J. Wood Professor of Physics
Stanford University and
1996 Nobel Prize winner in Physics
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
5:30 p.m.
Undergraduate Learning Center, Room 106
UTEP Campus
Reception to follow presentation
Douglas Osheroff
J.G. Jackson and C.J. Wood Professor of Physics;
Gerhard Casper University Fellow in Undergraduate Education
Douglas Osheroff began tinkering with the world of physics as a boy in the basement of his home in Aberdeen, Wash. At 6, he disassembled his toys to get at their electric motors. Later, he blew a hole in two walls with a muzzleloading rifle he built, and nearly blinded himself when a makeshift miner�s lamp exploded. But by the time he was a senior in high school, he had constructed a 110 keV X-ray machine, and everybody knew there was no stopping him. Osheroff went to the California Institute of Technology as an undergraduate (where he enrolled in Richard Feynman�s legendary two-year course on physics) and to Cornell University as a graduate student, where in 1971 he and his colleagues discovered the superuidity in helium-3. It was for this
breakthrough that Osheroff shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1996.
Fascinated by the wonders of the low-temperature world, Osheroff decided to stay in solid state physics after receiving his Ph.D. in 1973, and took a research position at Bell Labs during what he calls its "golden era." Osheroff says, "I was drawn to low-temperature work because it was so counterintuitive. Who would ever expect a liquid to flow up and out of the top of a beaker?" During his 15 years at Bell, Osheroff continued to probe the mysteries of the cold world, was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1981, and was courted by numerous universities, finally accepting Stanford University�s offer to join the physics department in 1987.
Osheroff is the recipient of numerous national and international awards, and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.