60 years of superconductivity research: (SN)x, organic metals and cuprates
This talk will be an expanded version of my 2026 H. Kamerlingh Onnes Prize presentation at the M2S Conference in July. The first ~ 50% will be a historical overview of my research before 1986 and the rest an overview of research on electron-doped cuprates from 1990 to the present, with an emphasis on more recent work. I started research in superconductivity as a postdoc with Ted Geballe at Stanford in 1967 after completing my PhD thesis on a totally unrelated topic, some novel optical properties of antiferromagnetic (now altermagnetic) insulators. Ted’sinfectious interest in exotic superconducting materials soon came to dominate my research interests as well. I will review the highlights—and a few lowlights—of my many years of basic experimental research on superconducting materials at Stanford, IBM San Jose/Almaden, and the University of Maryland. And my view of the impact of this research. I will discuss how much our understanding of superconducting materials has changed during this time, and yet how much is the same (e.g., we still don’t have a useful room-temperature superconductor and we still don’t understand the cuprates!!). In listening to this historical story, you should try to imagine where the “hot” superconductivity topics of today might be in the next 60 years.