Richardson, Robert Coleman (1937-2013), was an American professor who specialized in ultra-low temperature physics. Richardson shared the 1996 Nobel Prize for physics with fellow Americans David Lee and Douglas Osheroff for their discovery of superfluidity in helium-3, a rare isotope (type) of helium. See Lee, David Morris ; Osheroff, Douglas Dean .
In 1972, Richardson was one of a team of physicists who discovered that a type of helium becomes a superfluid when it is extremely cold. A superfluid is an exotic state of matter that acts like a liquid that flows absolutely freely. Helium-3 becomes superfluid when it is cooled to about two thousandths of a degree Celsius above absolute zero. Absolute zero is the temperature at which the atoms and molecules of a substance have the least possible energy. This temperature, which scientists believe is the lowest attainable, equals -273.15 °C.
Richardson was born on June 26, 1937, in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Arlington, Virginia. He entered Virginia Polytechnic in 1954, studying first electrical engineering and then chemistry. When he realized he could not become a chemist because he was color blind, he majored in physics instead. Richardson studied for an extra year after graduating to take a Master of Science degree. In 1960, Richardson began a Ph.D. course in physics at Duke University in North Carolina, where worked on low-temperature physics until 1966. He was then invited to join the Laboratory of Atomic and Solid-State Physics at Cornell University.
In November 1971, Richardson, Lee, and Osheroff were experimenting with helium-3 cooled so close to absolute zero that it was partly solid and partly liquid. The material behaved strangely. In one experiment, the pressure was steadily changed over a period of time. Osheroff noticed small jumps in the graph of pressure. The three men studied the jumps in more detail and, during 1972, proved that they were due to changes in the helium-3, marking its change to a superfluid. The team had discovered the first of three superfluid phases of liquid helium-3. Richardson died on Feb. 19, 2013.
