33 Facts About Brian Josephson

Best known for his pioneering work on superconductivity and quantum tunnelling, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1973 for his prediction of the Josephson effect, made in 1962 when he was a 22-year-old PhD student at Cambridge University.

Brian Josephson is the first Welshman to have won a Nobel Prize in Physics.

Brian Josephson shared the prize with physicists Leo Esaki and Ivar Giaever, who jointly received half the award for their own work on quantum tunnelling.

Brian Josephson has spent his academic career as a member of the Theory of Condensed Matter group at Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory.

Brian Josephson has been a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge since 1962, and served as professor of physics from 1974 until 2007.

Brian Josephson has expressed support for topics such as parapsychology, water memory and cold fusion, which has made him a focus of criticism from fellow scientists.

Brian Josephson was born in Cardiff, Wales, to Jewish parents, Mimi and Abraham Brian Josephson.

Brian Josephson attended Cardiff High School, where he credits some of the school masters for having helped him, particularly the physics master, Emrys Jones, who introduced him to theoretical physics.

Brian Josephson was known at Cambridge as a brilliant, but shy, student.

Brian Josephson graduated in 1960 and became a research student in the university's Mond Laboratory on the old Cavendish site, where he was supervised by Brian Pippard.

Brian Josephson was elected a fellow of Trinity College in 1962, and obtained his PhD in 1964 for a thesis entitled Non-linear conduction in superconductors.

Brian Josephson was 22 years old when he did the work on quantum tunnelling that won him the Nobel Prize.

Brian Josephson's calculations were published in Physics Letters in a paper entitled "Possible new effects in superconductive tunnelling," received on 8 June 1962 and published on 1 July.

When Bardeen began speaking, Brian Josephson stood up and interrupted him.

Whitaker writes that the discovery of the Brian Josephson effect led to "much important physics," including the invention of SQUIDs, which are used in geology to make highly sensitive measurements, as well as in medicine and computing.

Brian Josephson was awarded several important prizes for his discovery, including the 1969 Research Corporation Award for outstanding contributions to science, and the Hughes Medal and Holweck Prize in 1972.

Brian Josephson was awarded half the prize "for his theoretical predictions of the properties of a supercurrent through a tunnel barrier, in particular those phenomena which are generally known as the Brian Josephson effects".

Brian Josephson was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1970, and the same year was awarded a National Science Foundation fellowship by Cornell University, where he spent one year.

Brian Josephson held visiting professorships at Wayne State University in 1983, the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in 1984, and the University of Missouri-Rolla in 1987.

Brian Josephson said that Trinity College's tradition of interest in the paranormal meant that he did not dismiss these ideas out of hand.

Brian Josephson continued to explore the idea that there is intelligence in nature, particularly after reading Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics, and in 1979 took up a more advanced form of TM, known as the TM-Sidhi program.

Brian Josephson argued that meditation could lead to mystical and scientific insights, and that, as a result of it, he had come to believe in a creator.

Brian Josephson became involved in the mid-1970s with a group of physicists associated with the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, who were investigating paranormal claims.

In 1976, Brian Josephson travelled to California at the invitation of one of the Fundamental Fysiks Group members, Jack Sarfatti, who introduced him to others including laser physicists Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff, and quantum physicist Henry Stapp.

Brian Josephson delivered the Pollock Memorial Lecture in 2006, the Hermann Staudinger Lecture in 2009 and the Sir Nevill Mott Lecture in 2010.

Brian Josephson has repeatedly criticized "science by consensus," arguing that the scientific community is too quick to reject certain kinds of ideas.

Brian Josephson has compared parapsychology to the theory of continental drift, proposed in 1912 by Alfred Wegener to explain observations that were otherwise inexplicable, which was resisted and ridiculed until evidence led to its acceptance after Wegener's death.

Several physicists complained in 2001 when, in a Royal Mail booklet celebrating the Nobel Prize's centenary, Brian Josephson wrote that Britain was at the forefront of research into telepathy.

In 2004, Brian Josephson criticized an experiment by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry to test claims by Russian schoolgirl Natasha Demkina that she could see inside people's bodies using a special kind of vision.

Brian Josephson argued that this was statistically significant, and that the experiment had set her up to fail.

Keith Rennolis, professor of applied statistics at the University of Greenwich, supported Brian Josephson's position, asserting that the experiment was "woefully inadequate" to determine any effect.

Water memory is purported to provide a possible explanation for homeopathy; it is dismissed by scientists as pseudoscience, although Brian Josephson has expressed support for it since attending a conference at which French immunologist Jacques Benveniste first proposed it.

When Martin Fleischmann, the British chemist who pioneered research into it, died in 2012, Brian Josephson wrote a supportive obituary in the Guardian, and had published in Nature a letter complaining that its obituary had failed to give Fleischmann due credit.