This MedLibrary.org supplementary page on Conyers Herring is provided directly from the open source Wikipedia as a service to our readers. Please see the note below on authorship of this content, as well as the Wikipedia usage guidelines. To search for other content from our encyclopedia supplement, please use the form below:
Related Sponsors
| Conyers Herring | |
| Born | 1914 |
|---|---|
| Residence |  United States |
| Citizenship | American |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields | Physics |
| Institutions | Stanford University |
| Alma mater | Princeton University |
| Known for | solid state physics |
| Notable awards | Wolf Prize |
Conyers Herring (1914-) is an American physicist. He was the Wolf Prize in Physics in 1984/5. He is a Professor of Applied Physics at Stanford University.1
Contents |
Academic career
Conyers Herring completed his Ph.D in Physics from Princeton University in 1937. In 1946, he joined the technical staff of Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, where he remained until 1978. Then, he joined the faculty at Stanford University.
Contributions
Conyers Herring played a major role in the development of solid state physics.
He laid the foundations of band structure calculations of metals and semiconductors, culminating in the discovery of the Orthogonalized Plane Wave Method (O.P.W.). He was years ahead of his time in this contribution. A great deal of modern solid state physics as produced today stems from this original and early paper.
His influence on the development of solid state physics extends to a deep understanding of many facets such as surface physics, of thermionic emission, of transport phenomena in semiconductors and of collective excitations in solids such as spin waves.
He created the theoretical physics division at Bell Telephone Laboratory. Because of this, the total research effort at this institution and brought about much of the most original research in condensed matter physics during the last 30 years.
He has also been most influential in promoting international cooperation among scientists and through his character and his personal example, he has exemplified a somewhat unattainable ideal of how a research scholar in any field should operate.
He has contributed to religion and science discussions. He has stated about God that "Things such as truth, goodness, even happiness, are achievable by virtue of a force that is always present, in the here and now and available to me personally". 2
Awards and honors
In 1984/85 Conyers Herring was awarded the Wolf Prize in Physics along with Philippe Nozieres for "for their major contributions to the fundamental theory of solids, especially of the behaviour of electronsin metals".3In 1980, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) presented the James Murray Luck Award for Excellence in Scientific Reviewing to him. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
External links
- Profile of Conyers Herring
- The contributions of Conyers Herring
- Oral History interview transcript with Conyers Herring 5 August 2000, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library and Archives
- Oral History interview transcript with Conyers Herring 23 July 1974, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library and Archives
References
- ^ Conyers Herring at Stanford University
- ^ pages 42-44 of Margenau, H. (1992). Cosmos, Bios, Theos: Scientists Reflect on Science, God, and the Origins of the Universe, Life, and Homo sapiens. Open Court Publishing Company. co-edited with Roy Abraham Varghese. This book is mentioned in the Time magazine article: Galileo And Other Faithful Scientists
- ^ The Wolf Prize in Physics in 1984/85
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 3 November 2008, at 19:43.
Wikipedia Authorship and Review
Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by MedLibrary.org. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org.
Wikipedia Usage Guidelines
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Conyers Herring".
The URL for this specific entry is:
All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.