William A. Little

Professor (Emeritus)
Experimental Condensed Matter Physics

email (MMR)

MMR web page
 
 

Career History

• Ph.D., Rhodes University, South Africa, 1955 
• Ph.D., Glasgow University, Scotland, 1957 
• Shell Postgraduate Scholarship, United Kingdom, 1953-55 
• NRC Post-doctoral research fellow, 1956-58 
• Assistant Professor of Physics, Stanford University, 1958-1961 
• Associate Professor of Physics, Stanford University, 1961-65 
• Professor of Physics, 1965-94 
• Fellow, American Physical Society 
• John Simon Guggenheim Fellow 1964-65 
• NSF Senior Postdoctoral award 1970-71 
• Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching, 1976 
• Walter J. Gores Award, 1979 
• Industrial Research and Development IR-100 Award, 1981 

Research Interests

Theoretical and experimental study of the basic science of superconductivity of organic, metal-organic, and high temperature ceramic superconductors, with the particular focus on understanding the mechanism responsible for the pairing interaction in each of these systems, using innovative optical and electrical techniques. This work usually involves the preparation, characterization and experimental study of such materials over a wide range of temperatures. The work in the group is characterized by an involvement of each student in both theoretical and experimental work. Other research involves the study of neural networks using methods of statistical mechanics, and the study of novel cryogenic cooling techniques.