Robert Coleman Richardson
Richardson, Robert Coleman (1937-) is an American physics professor. He shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in physics for discovering that a type of helium called helium-3 becomes a superfluid, a rare form of matter, at an extremely low temperature. Richardson shared the prize with his research partners, the American physicists David Morris Lee and Douglas Dean Osheroff. The group's discovery was an important contribution to science, not only to physics but also to such other areas as cosmology (the study of the structure and development of the universe) and the development of semiconductors, materials that conduct electric current and are often used in computers and other electronic devices.
Richardson was born on June 26, 1937, in Washington, D.C. He earned a B.S. degree in 1958 and an M.S. degree in 1960, both in physics, from Virginia Polytechnic Institute. He received a Ph.D. degree in physics in 1966 from Duke University.
Richardson joined the faculty at Cornell University in 1966. He became assistant professor of physics in 1968, associate professor in 1972, and professor in 1975.
At Cornell in November 1971, Richardson, Lee, and Osheroff conducted experiments with helium-3 cooled close to absolute zero, the theoretical temperature at which the atoms and molecules of a substance have the least possible energy. This temperature, which scientists believe is the lowest attainable, equals -273.15 °C. The helium-3 was cooled to a temperature about two thousandths of a degree Celsius above absolute zero. At that point it became a super-fluid, a substance that flows without any inner resistance, unlike ordinary liquids.
From 1990 to 1997, Richardson was director of Cornell's Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics.