Nobel Laureate in Physics to Deliver Rustgi Lecture

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Douglas D. Osheroff, the 1996 Nobel laureate in physics, will deliver the 2002 Moti Lal Rustgi Memorial Lecture at 4:30 p.m. on March 15 in Room 225 of the Natural Sciences Complex on the University at Buffalo's North (Amherst) Campus.

The lecture, sponsored by the Department of Physics in the UB College of Arts and Sciences, will be free and open to the public.

Osheroff, J. G. Jackson and C. J. Wood Professor of Physics at Stanford University, has titled his lecture "What Really Happens at Absolute Zero?"

While it commonly is believed that all motion ceases at absolute zero -- an idea consistent with our every-day experience -- that is far from the truth. Osheroff will show, using simple ideas borrowed from modern physics, why various types of motion must exist at absolute zero, and will describe some of the remarkable but fragile ordered states of matter that exist at extremely low temperatures.

Osheroff, a graduate of Caltech, shared the Nobel Prize with David M. Lee and Robert C. Richardson, both faculty members at Cornell University. The trio worked in the low-temperature laboratory at Cornell in the early 1970s -- Osheroff was pursuing his doctorate -- and won the prize for their discovery of superfluidity in helium-3.

He has continued his work in the field, conducting research focused on studies of quantum fluids and solids and gases at ultra-low temperatures.

Osheroff began his career in the Solid State and Low Temperature Research Department of AT&T Bell Laboratories before joining the Stanford faculty in 1987. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

He is the recipient of the Simon Memorial Prize (1976), the Oliver E. Buckley Prize (1981), a "genius award" from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (1981) and the Walter J. Gores Award for Teaching from Stanford (1991).