Nobel laureate David Lee comes to UCF on Nov. 4

Through the Distinguished Speakers series, the College of Sciences is bringing Nobel Prize winner David Lee to UCF on November 4.

Lee will speak from 4:20 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. in Classroom Building One room 121. His presentation “The Magic of Superfluids” will cover the history of superfluidity in helium-4 and helium-3 as well as superconductivity.

“Spectacular effects such as the fountain effect in liquid helium and superconductivity levitation will be demonstrated in films and color photos. It will be shown that superfluidity and superconductivity are manifestations of quantum mechanics on a macroscopic scale,” Lee said.

Lee graduated from Harvard University in 1952, obtained his Masters degree from the University of Connecticut then entered the Ph.D. program at Yale in 1955. He worked under Henry A. Fairbank in the low-temperature physics group, doing experimental research on liquid ³He.

After graduating from Yale, Lee took a job at Cornell University, where he was responsible for setting up the new Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics. Lee, together with Robert Richardson and their graduate student, won the Nobel Prize in 1996 for the discovery of superfluidity in ³He, and the identification of its phase diagram.

He has also won the 1976 Sir Francis Simon Memorial Prize of the British Institute of Physics and the 1981 Oliver Buckley Prize of the American Physical Society along with Doug Osheroff and Robert Richardson for their superfluid ³He work.

In 2009, Lee moved his lab to Texas A&M University, where he continues to teach and do research.