Brian D. Josephson

British physicist

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Brian D. Josephson - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)

(born 1940). British physicist Brian D. Josephson discovered the Josephson effect, which describes the flow of electric current between two pieces of superconducting material separated by a thin layer of insulating material. (Superconductors are materials that lose all electrical resistance when cooled below a certain temperature near absolute zero.) For his research, Josephson, who was a 22-year-old graduate student at the time, won a share (with Leo Esaki and Ivar Giaever) of the 1973 Nobel Prize for Physics.

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