Leon Cooper Biography

Leon N Cooper is an American physicist renowned for his contributions in developing the BCS theory, the first successful and widely accepted superconductivity theory. He developed it along with fellow American physicists, John Bardeen and John Robert Schrieffer. This contribution of the trio led them to jointly receive the ‘Nobel Prize in Physics’ in 1972. In the BCS theory he discovered that when normal conditions prevail, electrons behave repulsively with each other, while they are drawn towards each other in superconductors. This concept was named after him as Cooper electron pairs. He also investigated the brain and the central nervous system and the low-temperature superfluid state. A ‘Thomas J. Watson Senior Professor of Science’ at the ‘Brown University’, Cooper has also developed the BCM theory, which is considerably the most accurate model of synaptic plasticity till present. He is the Director of the ‘Institute for Brain and Neural Systems’ at the ‘Brown University’. Apart from the ‘Nobel Prize’, he was also honoured with the ‘Comstock Prize’ in Physics by the ‘National Academy of Sciences’ in 1968 (received along with John Robert Schrieffer), the ‘Descartes Medal’ by the ‘Academie de Paris’, ‘Université René Descartes’, in 1977, the ‘John Jay Award’ of ‘Columbia College’ in 1985 and the ‘College de France Medal’ in 2000.