BCS: 50 Years , Edited by Leon N. Cooper and , Dmitri Feldman World Scientific, Hackensack, NJ, 2011. $135.00, $65.00 paper (575 pp.). ISBN 978-981-430-464-1, ISBN 978-981-430-465-8 paper
Superconductivity is enjoying a banner period: This year we commemorate the 100th anniversary of its discovery by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, and in 2007 we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) theory. Not surprisingly, those occasions have led to renewed interest in the subject and its history; as a result, various books on superconductivity are surely in the offing. An early entry is BCS: 50 Years, a collection of articles put together by Leon Cooper (the “C” in BCS) and Dmitri Feldman. It sets a high standard.
In BCS: 50 Years, the editors have combined historical reflections by many of the principals in the theory’s development and confirmation, reviews of more recent works of fundamental significance, and essays...
