Sir Anthony Leggett

Professor Sir Anthony J Leggett was born in London in March 1938. He attended Balliol College, Oxford, where he majored in Literae Humaniores (Classical Languages and Literature, Philosophy and Greco-Roman History), and thereafter Merton College, where he took a second undergraduate degree in Physics. Following this, he completed a DPhil in Theoretical Physics at Magdalen College under the supervision of Dirk ter Haar.

After postdoctoral research in Urbana in Illinois, Kyoto in Japan, and elsewhere, Sir Anthony joined the faculty of the University of Sussex in 1967, being promoted to Reader in 1971 and to Professor in 1978. In 1983 he became John D and Catherine T Macarthur Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a position from which he retired in December 2019.

Sir Anthony’s principal research interests lie in the areas of condensed matter physics, particularly high-temperature superconductivity, and the foundations of quantum mechanics. He retains a visiting position at Shanghai Jiaotong University in the People's Republic of China.