In 1962, Brian D. Josephson, a 22-year-old graduate student at England’s Cambridge University, born on January 4, 1940, in Cardiff, Wales, predicted that electrical current would flow, or tunnel, between two superconducting materials – things that at low temperatures lack electrical resistance, even when they are separated by a non-superconductor, or insulator.
In quantum physics, matter can be described as both waves and particles. Emerging from this is the phenomenon of tunnelling, which sees particles pass through barriers that according to classic physics should be impassable.
Josephson’s tunnelling theory was later confirmed, and in 1973 he was one of three scientists who shared the Nobel Prize in physics. (The others were Leo Esaki and Ivar Giaever)
This tunnelling phenomenon is today known as the “Josephson effect”, an important piece of evidence in the ongoing development of superconductivity.
He went on to make several other discoveries, including those leading to the development of the “Josephson junction switch”, which allows extreme high-speed switching on the molecular level. The junctions are the key components in superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs), widely used to make extremely sensitive measurements of magnetic fields.
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