Douglas D. Osheroff

Douglas Dean Osheroff was born on August 1, 1945, in Aberdeen, Washington, U.S. into a family of mixed ancestry. His father was the son of Jewish immigrants from Russia while his mother was the daughter of a Lutheran minister whose family hailed from what is now Slovakia. He has four siblings.

His father was a doctor and his mother was a nurse, so the atmosphere at home was an intellectually stimulating one. While the young boy did not show any inclination towards the medical profession, he was definitely interested in the sciences.

From a young age, he loved to perform scientific experiments and his parents wholeheartedly supported him in his pursuits. They bought him many scientific toys and gadgets which added to his enthusiasm. He was a good student who excelled in physics and mathematics but did not perform too well in the languages.

He went to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) from where he earned his bachelor’s degree in 1967. His college years were very exciting and he got the opportunity to attend lectures by Richard Feynman and did undergraduate research for Gerry Neugebauer.

Douglas Osheroff moved to the Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics at Cornell University as a graduate student. There he collaborated with David Lee and Robert C. Richardson to do research in low-temperature physics.

The team used a Pomeranchuk cell to investigate the behavior of 3He at temperatures within a few thousandths of a degree of absolute zero. This led to the discovery of unexpected effects in their measurements which led the researchers to eventually conclude that the 3He had undergone a phase transition to a superfluid state.

The discovery of superfluidity in helium-3 was a major one in low-temperature physics and enabled scientists to study directly in macroscopic systems the quantum mechanical effects that had previously been studied only indirectly.

Osheroff received a PhD in 1973 and began working at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey, where he continued his research in low-temperature phenomena in 3He. As a member of the Department of Solid State and Low Temperature Research under the direction of C. C. Grimes, he performed many interesting investigations with his team and measured many of the important characteristics of the superfluid phases which helped identify the microscopic states involved.

In the late 1970s, he began to focus more on solid 3He. Around this time he partnered with Gerry Dolan to discover antiferromagnet resonance in nuclear spin ordered solid 3He samples which they grew from the superfluid phase directly into the spin-ordered solid phase. From 1982 to 1987, he headed solid-state and low-temperature research at the labs.

Douglas Dean Osheroff is best known for discovering superfluidity in Helium-3 while working along with his colleagues at Cornell University as a graduate student. Along with David Lee and Robert C. Richardson, he used a Pomeranchuk cell to investigate the behavior of 3He at temperatures very near to absolute zero.