Customer Reviews

The Breakthrough: The Race for the Superconductor

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The 'Woodstock of Physics' was the maddening, marathon session of 3-4 thousand material and solid state physicists at the AIP meeting in NYC on March 18,1987. The excitement was the discovery of high temperature superconductors. Immediately after the Muller-Bednorz revelation of Tc at 30K, laboratories all over the world began to not just replicate, but to exceed 30K. The story centers around the Paul Chu group at University of Houston. The author, who was hired by Chu to reveal the structure of the material (in crystal form) is a crystallographer, so not surprisingly, provided much (exceeding for this reader) detail of the xray processes to decipher the bonds. (The chemical formula was known, but not the actual bonds). The book provides an almost day to day reporting of the exhilerating months leading up to the meeting. We learn about the often surreptitious and treacherous process of claiming first rights by publishing their work (no one wanted to be the next Elija Gray). Recognition in this case meant untold fame, glory and wealth. High temp superconductors could change our way of life, like fiber optics and lasers (but to this day has not achieved that potential, similar to cold fusion), and not some arcane, but equally impressive areas of research, such as cosmology and particle physics. This book does not deal at all with the history of the quest for superconductivity, beginning with Onnes, Van der Waals and Dewar in the early 1900's, but as far as this reader knows, is the only one written by one of the participants and lends much credibility to the first hand accounting and not by a journalist, who has to rely on sources.

This book describes very nice the first two months of 1987 where all labs around the world are investigating the crystal structure of the new discovered YBaCuO superconductor.