JOSEPHSON, BRIAN DAVID

JOSEPHSON, BRIAN DAVID (1940– ), British physicist. Josephson was born in Cardiff, Wales, where he was a brilliant pupil. He studied physics at Cambridge, receiving his doctorate in 1964. In 1962, at the age of only 22, he discovered the Josephson effect, showing the special characteristics of tunneling between superconductors, which led to the attainment at IBM of switching speeds up to 100 times faster than those obtained with conventional chips and incomparably greater data-processing capabilities. In the same year he was made a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, subsequently becoming assistant director of research and reader in physics at the university and professor in 1974. He was appointed a fellow of the Royal Society in 1970. In 1969, he received a $10,000 Research Corporation award for his outstanding contribution to science and, in 1973, was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics (jointly with Dr. Ivar Giaever and Dr. Leon Esaki), one of the youngest men ever to receive this award.