BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Osheroff received his undergraduate degree in physics from Caltech University. In 1973, he finished his doctoral degree in physics from Cornell University with a dissertation topic on "Unusual properties of helium-3 in liquid and solid phase". From 1972 to 1981 he served as technical staff at Bell Labs and then from 1981 to 1987 as director of low temperatures group at ATT-Bell. In 1996 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics with David M. Lee and Robert C. Richardson for the discoveries of Superfluidity State in 3He. He is currently an emeritus professor at the Physics Department at Stanford University. He has been awarded with the Sir Francis Simon medal from the British Institute of Physics, the Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Award from the American Physical Society, and the MacArthur Prize. He is member of the National Academy of Science in the USA. He has been a keynote speaker in countries like Portugal, Spain, China, Arab Emirates, the Netherlands, USA, Colombia and Mexico.

ABSTRACT

HOW ADVANCES IN SCIENCE ARE MADE

How advances in science are made, and how they may come to benefit mankind at large are complex issues. The discoveries that most influence the way we think about nature seldom can be anticipated, and frequently the applications for new technologies developed to probe a specific characteristic of nature are also seldom clear, even to the inventors of these technologies. One thing is most clear: Seldom are such advances made by individuals alone. Rather, they result from the progress of the scientific community; asking questions, developing new technologies to answer those questions, and sharing their results and their ideas with others. There are indeed research strategies that can substantially increase the probability of one's making a discovery, and the speaker will illustrate some of these strategies in the context of a number of well known discoveries, including the work he did as a graduate student, for which he shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1996.