Douglas Osheroff

Douglas Dean Osheroff was born August 1, 1945, and built his career in experimental condensed matter physics, working at the coldest edge of what matter can do. In 1996 he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with David Lee and Robert C. Richardson for co-discovering superfluidity in Helium-3—a phase of matter where quantum mechanics takes over at the macro scale and viscosity vanishes. The work cracked open new physics in a place most thought held no surprises left. Osheroff went on to Stanford, where he became the J. G. Jackson and C. J. Wood Professor of Physics, a post he now holds emeritus.