Peter M. Levy

Peter Levy, a theoretical condensed matter physicist who made pioneering contributions to the understanding of magnetic interactions and electronic transport in solids, passed away on 20 November 2018 in New York City.

Peter’s research covered a broad spectrum of condensed matter physics, including magnetism, electronic transport, disordered systems (spin glasses), and correlated electron physics (heavy fermions). In his first research projects, Peter investigated the effect of orbital angular momentum on exchange interactions in insulators. Together with Albert Fert, he extended these orbital effects to metals, establishing the role of orbital angular momentum in skew scattering and the extraordinary Hall effect due to rare-earth impurities in the transition metals.

They also developed the theory of the Dzyaloshinsky–Moriya exchange interaction of magnetic impurities imbedded in metallic hosts; the theory has profound applications in today’s spin-orbit electronics. When Fert and Peter Grünberg discovered giant magnetoresistance in magnetic multilayers with three-dimensional transition-metal ferromagnets in 1988, Peter Levy began working with his then-graduate student Shufeng Zhang and Albert on the theory of this effect, i.e., GMR. Peter Levy’s interests in understanding electronic transport in magnetic multilayers and magnetic tunnel junctions continued throughout his career, and he made seminal contributions to the then-nascent field of spintronics, a term that is the concatenation of spin-transport electronics.

Peter was also an inspiring mentor to his graduate students. He always encouraged students to pursue their own understanding of physics phenomena. He spent long hours on his students’ projects. He particularly enjoyed working on Saturdays, when he and his students could discuss physics in the quiet environment. His passion and intelligence for physics influenced his students and their careers tremendously.

Peter was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, on 10 January 1936, three years before the beginning of World War II. His family left Frankfurt in 1939, and Peter spent a year in Leighton Buzzard, England (a rail junction between Oxford and Cambridge) in a home for the children of refugees, established by the Rothschild family, while his parents worked and studied English in London. In 1940 he arrived in New York, and his family settled in Washington Heights.

After completing a BME at City College in 1958, Peter studied at Harvard with John H. Van Vleck and received his PhD in 1963. He spent two years in Grenoble, France, with Louis Néel, and in 1964 he returned to Philadelphia as a postdoc in physics, where he worked with Herb Callen on Green’s function decoupling schemes. In 1966 Peter took on his first teaching position as an assistant professor at Yale University, and in 1970 came to the Heights campus of New York University as associate professor. After the Heights campus closed in 1973, he joined the physics department at the Washington Square campus. In 1975 he was promoted to full professor.

At an election eve party in 1964, he met the love of his life, Darline. They were married in 1965 and have two sons. Erik is in the business world, and Serge is a fine-arts photographer. Over the years, they shared their interests in music, art, travel, and, in particular, traveling and living in France, where Peter did research with collaborators at the CNRS.

Peter served as chair of the physics department from 1976 to 1982 and again from 1991 to 1997. He was a strong advocate for physics at NYU. As chair he built on the department’s strength in particle physics while also establishing a condensed-matter physics group, which is thriving today in the department’s Centers for Quantum Phenomena and Soft Condensed Matter Physics. Equally impressive is that he did this while maintaining a leading research program.

Peter will be remembered as a valued colleague, passionate physicist, terrific mentor, and good friend to us and his collaborators around the world.