John Ziman

John Michael Ziman ( born May 16, 1925 in Cambridge, † 2 January 2005) was a British theoretical solid state physicist and science activist.

Life

Zimans father was a civil servant in India, and his mother came from a family of rabbinical scholar. His maternal grandfather, Angel Gaster, a native of Romania, was a prominent London physician and one of the founders of the London Jewish Hospital. His brother was Moses Gaster, a notable scholar, Vice - President of the Royal Asiatic Society and a leading rabbi of the London Sephardi community.

He moved as a child with his parents to New Zealand, where his father had a farm near Cambridge, where he went to school in Hamilton and 1943 at Victoria University of Wellington his study of physics began ( master's degree 1946). He continued his studies in mathematics and theoretical physics continues at Balliol College, Oxford University, where in 1949 he earned a degree with honors in mathematics. In 1952 he received his doctorate in Stanley Rushbrooke and KWH Stevens with a thesis on electrons in liquid metals in theoretical physics. After that, he was a lecturer from 1951 to 1953 in mathematics at Oxford and 1953/54, a fellow of the Pressed Steel Corporation. He conducted research at the Clarendon Laboratory, initially antiferromagnetism, then in the low-temperature physics group of Francis Simons liquid helium, electron conduction in metals and transport properties of crystalline lattices. In 1954 he went as a lecturer in physics at the University of Cambridge, where he became a Fellow of King's College. He was from 1964 Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Bristol, where he developed a theory group, which included, among others, Michael Berry. Since 1966 he was a lecturer at the Abdus Salam International Centre founded for Theoretical Physics in Trieste almost a year. From 1982 he was a visiting professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences ( Department of Humanities ) of the Imperial College in London. During the Thatcher government from 1986 to 1991 he was the first director of the newly established Science Policy Support Group ( SPSG ).

Ziman undertook in the 1950s and 1960s, basic research on theoretical solid state physics, especially in the development of quantum theory of transport phenomena in crystalline solids and as a pioneer in the theory of disordered solids and liquid metals, in which he introduced the use of two-point correlation functions and pseudopotentials. A hallmark of his work was the close connection to the experiment. He is known by various textbooks on theoretical solid state physics ( Condensed Matter Physics ).

Later he dealt mainly with philosophical, pedagogical and sociological issues of Sciences, which he also wrote several books and essays. This commitment began early on. In New Zealand, he was temporarily in the Communist Party and in Oxford in student organizations active ( International Union of Students, National Union of Students ). 1958/59 he was the editor of the Cambridge Review and 1960 he held lectures on the radio, which showed his book Public Knowledge (1968).

He looked at the development of the sciences, especially from a sociological and political perspective, and was in 1973 with Paul Sieghart ( a lawyer ), one of the founders of the Council of Science and Society (CSS ), which he headed from 1976 to 1990. In this role, he co-authored a number of reports such as Super Star Technologies (1976 ) on the social control of technology and The world of science and the rule of law (1986, with Paul Sieghart, J. Humphrey ) on human rights violations in the field of science in particular in the Soviet sphere. In the 1980s, he also continued intensively for Soviet dissidents and ensured among other things, the publication of Medvedev Papers in the West.

He was also active in arms control, but less in the Pugwash conferences, where he was briefly active, but in their own committees in the CSS.

In 1967 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society.

He was married twice ( his first wife, from 1951 until her death in 2001 with Rosemary Dixon ) and had four ( adopted ) children.

Writings

Books on solid state physics:

  • Electrons and phonons: the theory of transport phenomena in solids, Oxford, Clarendon Press 1960
  • Electrons in metals. A short guide to the Fermi surface, Taylor and Francis, 1963 ( Reprint of Contemporary Physics 1962)
  • Elements of Advanced Quantum Theory, Cambridge University Press 1969
  • Principles of the theory of solids, Cambridge University Press, 1972, 1979
  • Models of disorder: the theoretical physics of homogenously disordered systems, Cambridge University Press 1979

Books, essays generally to the sciences:

  • Jasper Rose Camford Observed, London, Gollancz, 1964 ( social environment of the traditional elite universities of Cambridge, Oxford)
  • Public Knowledge: an Essay Concerning the social dimension of science, Cambridge University Press 1968
  • The Force of Knowledge: The Scientific Dimension of Society, Cambridge University Press 1976
  • Reliable Knowledge: an Exploration of the Grounds for Belief in Science, Cambridge University Press 1978
  • Teaching and Learning about Science and Society, Cambridge University Press 1980
  • An Introduction to Science Studies: The Philosophical and Social Aspects of Science and Technology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984
  • Prometheus Bound: Science in a dynamic steady state, Cambridge University Press 1994
  • Of one mind: the collectivization of science, AIP Press ( American Institute of Physics ), 1995
  • Real Science: What It Is and What It Means, Cambridge University Press 2000
  • The collectivization of Science, Proc. Royal Society, Series B, Volume 219, 1983, pp. 1-19 ( Bernal Lecture )
  • Is Science loosing its objectivity? , Nature, vol 382, 1996, pp. 751-754 ( Medawar Lecture, abridged version )
Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland Cambridge, New Zealand Michael Berry (physicist) Zhores Medvedev Integrated Authority File
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