Philip W. Anderson was one of the most influential theoretical physicists of the postwar era and a Nobel laureate whose work fundamentally shaped modern condensed matter physics. He served as a professor at Princeton University from 1975 until his retirement in 1996, where he became Professor Emeritus while continuing to contribute to the field until his later years. Born in Indianapolis on December 13, 1923, Anderson received his PhD from Harvard University in 1949 under the supervision of John Hasbrouck Van Vleck, a relationship that profoundly influenced his scientific development. Prior to his full-time appointment at Princeton, he spent nearly 35 years at Bell Laboratories, where he made many of his groundbreaking contributions to physics, establishing himself as a leading figure in the field.
Anderson's most influential work includes his seminal 1958 paper predicting Anderson localization, which demonstrated that sufficiently strong disorder can transform metals into insulators by localizing electron waves, a discovery that revolutionized understanding of electronic transport in disordered materials. His research on symmetry breaking played a pivotal role in the development of the Standard Model of particle physics and provided theoretical foundations for the Higgs mechanism, which explains how elementary particles acquire mass. Anderson made profound contributions to the understanding of superconductivity, including developing the pseudospin approach to BCS theory and proposing the influential Resonating Valence Bond theory of high-temperature superconductivity that stimulated extensive research and led to the field of spin liquids. The Nobel Committee specifically recognized his research on semiconductors, superconductivity, and magnetism when awarding him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1977, which he shared with John H. Van Vleck and Nevill F. Mott.
Throughout his distinguished career, Anderson mentored numerous prominent physicists, including F. Duncan Haldane, who later won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2016 and described Anderson as a transformative mentor who reshaped his approach to scientific thinking. His influential writings, including Concepts of Solids (1963) and Basic Notions of Condensed Matter Physics (1984), became foundational texts that educated generations of physicists in the field. Anderson's intellectual approach was characterized by an intuitive and often contrarian perspective that frequently revealed essential features of complex problems from novel angles, fundamentally changing how physicists approached condensed matter systems. Though he passed away on March 29, 2020 at age 96, Anderson's theoretical frameworks continue to guide research in condensed matter physics, quantum materials, and topological matter, cementing his legacy as one of the architects of modern physics.
