In this biography
Quick facts
- Born
- 13 December 1923
- Died
- 29 March 2020
- Birthplace
- Indianapolis, Indiana, United States
- Country
- United States
- Nationality
- Not independently established
- Known for
- Explaining electron localisation in disordered systems and developing theories of collective behaviour in matter
Why this life matters
His work made disorder and collective organisation central research questions, rather than treating them only as complications of ideal crystals.
Timeline
Key moments
Born in Indianapolis
Anderson was born on 13 December.
Localisation paper
Published a model of absent diffusion in a random lattice.
Physics Nobel
Shared the prize with Nevill Mott and John Van Vleck.
A Harvard education interrupted by war work
Philip Warren Anderson was born in Indianapolis in 1923 and grew up in Urbana, Illinois. He entered Harvard before wartime work at the Naval Research Laboratory redirected him toward antenna technology. Returning to Harvard, he completed a doctorate in 1949 under John Hasbrouck Van Vleck. The path combined practical electronics with theoretical training. It also introduced the question that would recur throughout his career: how can a relatively simple physical model make the behaviour of a complicated material intelligible?
Bell Laboratories and close experimental contact
At Bell Laboratories, Anderson worked among researchers including John Bardeen, Charles Kittel, Conyers Herring and Gregory Wannier. His autobiography describes learning from colleagues and from close exchanges between theory and experiment. In 1958 he published a model in which random differences between lattice sites could prevent diffusion. The paper did not treat a disordered solid merely as an imperfect version of a clean crystal. It made randomness part of the mathematical problem and asked under what conditions motion through the system remained possible.
Localisation within a broader scientific career
Anderson also worked on magnetism, superconductivity and collective phenomena. His institutional career included Cambridge and Princeton as well as Bell Laboratories. In 1977 he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Nevill Mott and Van Vleck for theoretical investigations of magnetic and disordered systems. His 1958 result became a foundation for localisation research, but his work did not end with that paper. He later joined Elihu Abrahams, T.V. Ramakrishnan and Don Licciardello in developing a scaling approach to the problem.
Models, emergent behaviour and a continuing influence
Anderson died in Princeton on 29 March 2020. Princeton’s account describes a career spanning both the nature of particular materials and collective phenomena more broadly. His localisation work is especially useful as an example of a model that changes the question: instead of asking only how frequently a particle scatters, it asks whether the quantum state supports transport across the system. That distinction helped make disorder a productive subject of research. It also shows why a famous named effect is best understood through its assumptions and consequences, rather than through a slogan about electrons becoming stuck.
Quick answers
Frequently asked questions about Philip Anderson
- What is Philip Anderson known for?
- He developed theories of electronic and collective behaviour in materials, including the localisation of quantum states in disordered systems.
- Who shared Anderson’s 1977 Nobel Prize?
- Nevill Mott and John Hasbrouck Van Vleck shared the physics prize with him.
Keep exploring
Lives connected to this story
- John Bardeen
Read another Bell Laboratories theorist’s work on collective electronic behaviour, without equating superconductivity with disorder-driven localisation.
- David Gross
Explore David Gross’s related research on quantum chromodynamics.
- Peter Higgs
Explore Peter Higgs’s related research on higgs mechanism.
- Robert Laughlin
Explore Robert Laughlin’s related research on fractional quantum hall effect.
- Daniel Tsui
Explore Daniel Tsui’s related research on fractional quantum hall effect.
- Alan Heeger
Explore Alan Heeger’s related research on conducting polymers.
Sources and further reading
Explore the evidence
These references support the biography and offer further reading. Official records, first-person accounts and independent reporting provide different perspectives; image records document attribution and licensing.
- 1. Nobel Prize OutreachPhilip W. Anderson — Facts
- 2. Nobel Prize OutreachPhilip W. Anderson — Biographical
- 3. Princeton UniversityNobel laureate and Princeton physicist Philip Anderson dies at age96
- 4. P.W. Anderson / American Physical SocietyAbsence of Diffusion in Certain Random Lattices
- 5. Philip W. Anderson / Nobel LectureLocal Moments and Localized States