Robert Coleman Richardson Biography

Robert Coleman Richardson was an American experimental physicist who won a share of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Physics. Working as a senior researcher in the Cornell University Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics, he along with David Lee and Douglas Osheroff discovered the property of superfluidity in helium-3 atoms which was a very vital discovery in experimental physics. Born in Washington D.C., he grew up during the World War II. As a young boy, he loved to attend school though he was not a particularly bright student. He was very active in the Boy Scouts and served as a counselor in Camp Letts, a Boy Scout Camp, during his high school years. He joined the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, initially opting for a course in electric engineering. However, he soon became bored and shifted to physics as a major. He furthered his education after his graduation and eventually earned a Ph.D. in physics from Duke University. He moved to Cornell University as a postdoctoral researcher and was promoted to assistant professor. It was during the beginning of his long career at Cornell that he became a part of the research team that discovered superfluidity in the isotope helium-3.