Physical Society Colloquium

How Advances in Science Are Made

Doug Osheroff

Nobel Laureate
Stanford University

In this talk, I discuss how it is often impossible to know, even after an advance is made, how it might benefit mankind, and I use NMR (for which four Nobel Prizes have been given) as an example. I also discuss how advances are seldom made by individuals alone, but rather through the progress of the scientific community.

Douglas Osheroff obtained his Ph.D in ultra-low temperature physics at Cornell University in 1973, and became a member of the technical staff at Bell Laboratories. Since 1987, Douglas Osheroff is a professor at Stanford University. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Professor Osheroff has won numerous awards including the Simon memorial prize ('76), the Oliver E. Buckley prize ('81) and is the co-recipient of the 1996 Nobel prize in Physics for his discovery of Superfluid ³He.