Anthony Leggett

Sir Anthony J. Leggett is pioneering exploration into what happens when the bizarre laws of quantum physics are “pushed up” from the atomic level toward everyday life.

Leggett was born in London, England in 1938. He studied classical languages, literature and Greco-Roman history and philosophy at Oxford before turning to theoretical physics. He won the 2003 Nobel Prize for physics for his groundbreaking work in superfluids – liquids that flow without friction, conduct heat perfectly and defy the laws of classical physics in many other ways.

Leggett has been an advisor to CIFAR’s Quantum Information Processing program since 2002. His recent research centers around “building Schrödinger’s Cat in the laboratory.” In other words, he explores how quantum phenomena – such as the ability of a subatomic particle to be in two places at once – affect events on a human scale.

Quantum mechanics is often obscured behind complex mathematics, but Leggett’s work humanizes this exotic world of extreme materials and strange properties.