Brian Pippard


Sir Alfred Brian Pippard, FRS, was a British physicist. He was Cavendish Professor of Physics from 1971 until 1982 and an Honorary Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge, of which he was the first President.

Biography

Pippard was educated at Clifton College and Clare College, Cambridge, where he graduated with MA and PhD degrees. After working as a scientific officer in radar research during the Second World War, he was appointed as a Demonstrator in Physics at the University of Cambridge in 1946, subsequently becoming a Lecturer in the subject in 1950, a Reader in 1959, and the first John Humphrey Plummer Professor of Physics a year later. In 1971 he was elected Cavendish Professor of Physics.
Pippard demonstrated the reality, as opposed to the mere abstract concept, of Fermi surfaces in metals by establishing the shape of the Fermi surface of copper through measuring the reflection and absorption of microwave electromagnetic radiation can be deduced within the framework of the BCS theory of superconductivity.
Pippard was the author of Elements of Classical Thermodynamics for Advanced Students of Physics,
Dynamics of Conduction Electrons, and The Physics of Vibration. He is also a co-author of the three-volumes encyclopaedia Twentieth Century Physics. As the Cavendish Professor of Physics at Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, he compiled Cavendish Problems in Classical Physics, based in large part on past examination questions for Cambridge physics students.
Pippard was the doctoral supervisor of Brian David Josephson who in 1973 received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of what is known as the Josephson effect.

Obituaries