David Lee
JAN 20, 2016
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.031137
On this date in 1931, Nobel laureate David Lee was born in Rye, New York. After earning his doctorate in physics from Yale in low-temperature physics, he became a professor at Cornell where he established the school’s Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics. Working with Robert C. Richardson and Doug Osheroff in the 1970s, Lee cooled helium-3 to within a few thousandths of a degree of absolute zero, converting it to a superfluid—a fluid with zero viscosity. The discovery of superfluidity in helium-3, which normally behaves as a fermion particle, was rewarded with the 1996 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Date in History: 20 January 1931
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