Cooper, Leon

Born Feb. 28, 1930, in New York. American theoretical physicist.

Cooper graduated from Columbia University in 1951. In 1954–55 he worked at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, and from 1955 to 1957, under J. Bardeen at the University of Illinois. Since 1958 he has been at Brown University, Providence, R. I.

In 1972, Cooper was awarded a Nobel Prize (together with Bardeen and J. R. Shrieffer) for developing the microscopic theory of superconductivity, which is based on Cooper’s hypothesis of the possible formation of Cooper pairs in a superconductor (seeCOOPER EFFECT).