Séamus Davis Awarded Honorary Degree by National University of Ireland
December 2, 2013
The Chancellor of the National University of Ireland (NUI) today conferred an honorary Doctor of Science degree to J.C. Séamus Davis, a Senior Physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory and the J.G. White Distinguished Professor of Physical Sciences at Cornell University.
Davis, a graduate of NUI’s University College Cork (UCC), was described by Michael Murphy, President of UCC, as “one of the world’s most accomplished physicists,” whose “ground-breaking” accomplishments include his discovery of the Superfluid Josephson Effect, based on the 1960s prediction of Richard Feynman and Brian Josephson that the macroscopic quantum dynamics of a superfluid could be revealed as a pure musical tone. “Seamus developed the complex instrumentation necessary and eventually discovered this quantum sound—the first time that a quantum mechanical phenomenon was experienced by one of the senses.” Murphy also referred to Davis’ invention in the 2000s of the “spectroscopic imaging scanning tunneling microscope,” an instrument that allows the quantum “matter waves” of electrons to be visualized (and even converted into movies), revealing many amazing and exotic quantum effects. “Today he is leading the world in applying his science to discover compounds that will exhibit superconductivity at room temperature, allowing the passage of electricity without loss of energy—a holy grail of science for economic and social benefit,” Murphy said, concluding that “Seamus Davis is one of the most accomplished Irish university graduates of the 20th century.”
For more about Davis’ recent contributions to science, see these news releases about his work:
- A Grand Unified Theory of Exotic Superconductivity?
- Imaging Electron Pairing in a Simple Magnetic Superconductor
- Dopants Dramatically Alter Electronic Structure of Superconductor
- Atomic-scale Visualization of Electron Pairing in Iron Superconductors
- Impurity Atoms Introduce Waves of Disorder in Exotic Electronic Material
2013-4477 | INT/EXT | Newsroom
