The early 1960s were a period of intense ferment in superconductivity research. In 1957 John Bardeen, Leon Cooper, and J. Robert Schrieffer at the University of Illinois offered the first microscopic theory of superconductivity. Around the same time Alexei Abrikosov at the Institute for Physical Problems in Moscow explained phenomenologically how certain materials can admit some magnetic flux without losing their superconductivity. Experimentally, techniques for growing superconducting films were improving rapidly at the corporate laboratories of firms such as General Electric (GE), Ford Motor Co, Arthur D. Little, and AT&T.
Thus when future Nobel laureate Philip Anderson took a sabbatical from Bell Laboratories in 1961–62 to teach at Cambridge University, he encountered a classroom of graduate students eager to learn about the latest developments in low-temperature physics. Even among those high achievers, one student stood out: a brusque, brilliant 22-year-old named Brian Josephson. As Anderson wrote in Physics Today (...
