Vitaly Ginzburg and high temperature superconductivity: Personal reminiscences

Physica C: Superconductivity and its Applications

Volumn 468, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 105-110

  Mazin, Igor I ^a  

^a NAVAL RESEARCH LABORATORY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

SOCIETIES AND INSTITUTIONS; STUDENTS;

HIGH TEMPERATURE SUPERCONDUCTIVITY; PERSONAL REMINISCENCES; RESEARCHERS; RUSSIA; SCIENTIFIC EVENTS;

SUPERCONDUCTIVITY;

EID: 38549158529     PISSN: 09214534     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/j.physc.2007.08.015     Document Type: Article

References (29)

1. I am using here and below the American terminology that roughly corresponds to the former Soviet system. Of course, there were no M.Sc. theses, but a so-called "diploma", no Ph.D., but a "candidate degree", no declaration of major in American sense, etc., but, in the first approximation, using the American terminology should give the reader a proper impression.
2. Ironically, the same argument that was used (unofficially) to justify discrimination against Jews is now being used in the States to justify the Affirmative Action: Jews (meaning people whose Jewish ancestry was indicated in their state IDs, not the followers of the Jewish faith) comprised less than 2% of the population, but a much larger fraction of all college students, so for the sake of proportional representation they were discriminated against in the admission process.
3. Usage of Russian patronymic names is not straightforward for an English speaker. In modern English, there are essentially two way of addressing a person: a more formal one, Mr./Dr./Ms. Doe, and a more intimate one, John/Mary etc. In Russian one has a choice of using (i) the second person singular or plural (like French tu and vous), (ii) the first name solely OR with the patronymic or (iii) using a salutation, Comrade or Citizen in the Soviet time, Gospodin (Master) now. An example can illustrate the basics of it: at Lebedev, my thesis adviser was Eugene "Jenya" Maksimov, about 15 years my senior and I also collaborated with Oleg Dolgov, a junior staff researcher at that time. The head of Superconductivity Section was Professor D.A. Kirzhnits, who will appear later on these pages. I was communicating with these people on a daily basis, addressing them, respectively, as Jenia + "vous", Oleg + "tu", and David Abramovich (of course, with a "vous").
4. See e.g.,. Anderson P.W. Science 144 (1964) 373
5. Cohen M.L., and Anderson P.W. Comments on the maximum superconducting transition temperature. In: Douglass D.H. (Ed). Superconductivity in d- and f-Band Metals (1972), AIP, New York 17
6. D.A. Kirzhnits, E.G. Maksimov, D.I. Khomskii, Lebedev Physical Inst. preprint #108 (Moscow, 1970); English translation: J. Low Temp. Phys. 10 (1973) 79.
7. Bogoliubov N.N., Tolmachev V.V., and Shirkov D.V. A New Method in the Theory of Superconductivity (1959), Consultants Bureau
8. P. Morel, P.W. Anderson, Phys. Rev. 125 (1962) 1263 . Incidentally, it appears to be one of very few papers in theoretical physics bearing the affiliation French Embassy, New York, New York.
9. c(max) ∼ 10 K.
10. O.V. Dolgov, D.A. Kirzhnits, E.G. Maksimov, Lebedev Physical Inst. preprint #278 (Moscow, 1978); English translation: Rev. Mod. Phys. 53 (1981) 81, see especially the Appendix: The sign of the static dielectric function and the problem of superconductivity.
11. Although it is not the subject of this article, I cannot avoid mentioning in passing that D. Kirzhnits' name is practically unknown in the West as opposed to many other Soviet theorists of his generation, yet his understanding of physics and his command of the mathematical methods were second to none. The fact that he left a relatively modest trace in the memory of physics community is to a large extent due to his unorthodox, in fact, orthogonal to nearly all of us, idea of what constitutes an interesting and worthy problem in physics. For instance, he spent several years solving, brilliantly, the problem of the interaction of a magnetic monopole with matter, and I have yet to meet another person who would take interest in this problem.
12. Kirzhnits D.A. Usp. Fiz. Nauk 119 (1976) 357 Eng. Tr. Sov. Phys.-Usp. 19, 530
13. It is sometimes confusing to speak about the sign of pairing interaction without specifying, whether the sign change occurs in real or reciprocal space. In this quote, Anderson speaks about the real space, but an interaction can be repulsive everywhere in the reciprocal space and still be pairing (but not in the s-channel).
14. Zhitomirsky M.E., Rice T.M., and Anisimov V.I. Nature 402 (1999) 251
15. Uspenskii Y.A. Zh. Eksp. Teor. Fiz. 76 (1979) 1620 Eng. tran.: Sov. Phys. JETP, 49, 822.
16. In: Ginzburg V.L., and Kirzhnits D.A. (Eds). Problema Vysokotemperaturnoi Sverkhprovodimosti (The Problem of High-Temperature Superconductivity) (1977), Moscow, Nauka [Translated into English: High-Temperature Superconductivity (NewYork: Consultants Bureau, 1982)]
17. Pashitski E.A. ZhETF 64 (1968) 2387
18. Frohlich H. Proc. Phys. Soc. C 1 (1968) 544
19. Geilikman B.T. Usp. Fiz. Nauk 88 (1966) 327 (Eng. tran.: Sov. Phys. Uspekhi 9, 142)
20. Geilikman B.T. Usp. Fiz. Nauk 109 (1973) 65 (Eng. tran.: Sov. Phys. Uspekhi 16, 17)
21. A piece of students' folklore goes that V.L. once failed in a qualifying exam a Ph.D. student working in quantum field theory because he did not know the BCS formula.
22. Unfortunately, the flow of time makes us more and more specialized. The time of the Chaucerian DOCTOUR OF PHISIK, learned in every magyk natureel, from astronomye to surgerye, is long gone. I may be old-fashioned, but I am a little scared of experts in the 1D Hubbard model or pseudopotential calculations, with no interest in anything beyond their narrow field of expertise.
23. Some remarks about the Soviet Physics seminars are here in place. As opposed to Western seminars, usually ad hoc gatherings on occasion of a visitor's talk, Russian tradition mandated regular, usually weekly seminars, more often two hours than one hour long, with an option of inviting a guest speaker, but often just one of the insiders reporting on a recent work. Seminars were usually known by the name of the moderator. V.L. himself orchestrated the work of three seminars, on general theory, on superconductivity and on astrophysics.
24. The Lebedev Physical Institute had restricted access. The security regulations were similar to the place where I work now, the US Naval Research Laboratory, although less severe than at most DOE labs (the Soviet analogue of which was Kurchatov Institute). Visits had to be reported to the security office by the hosting scientist, and the office would issue a day pass. Obviously the hundreds or more outside participants of the Ginzburg's Seminar (as it was universally known) could not physically be processed by one or two security officers, and V.L. had managed to procure a special arrangement that every Wednesday morning two of his grad students would sit at the gate, check IDs and write down the names of all seminar guests in one list that would be submitted to security a posteriori. For a while, I was one of those students.
25. Chu C.W., Early S., Geballe T.H., Rusakov A., and Schwall R.E. J. Phys. C: Solid State Phys. 8 (1975) L241
26. Brandt N.B., Kuvshinnikov S.V., Rusakov A.P., and Semyonov M.V. JETP Lett. 27 (1978) 37
27. Chu C.W., Rusakov A.P., Huang S., Early S., Geballe T.H., and Huang C.Y. Phys. Rev. B 18 (1978) 2116
28. 2S conference in Interlaken, and two young fellows asked his permission to join his table. The parties introduced themselves, and the young physicists politely asked my friend, not much older than themselves at that time, what his field of research was. After hearing that he was doing band structure calculations, they blushed as if he admitted to pedophilia or secret membership in a neo-Nazi cult, and at the first possibility excused themselves and moved to another table.
29. Soviet Physics - Uspekhi, 32 (1989) 469.