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Leon Cooper
Leon Cooper
	Cooper in 2007
Born	Leon N. Kupchik; February 28, 1930; New York City, U.S.
Died	October 23, 2024 (aged 94); Providence, Rhode Island, U.S.
Alma mater	Columbia University (BA, MA, PhD)
Known for	Cooper pairs; BCM theory; BCS theory
Awards	John Jay Award (1985); Nobel Prize in Physics (1972); Comstock Prize in Physics (1968)
	Scientific career
Fields	Physics
Institutions	Brown University
Thesis	Mu-Mesonic Atoms and the Electromagnetic Radius of the Nucleus (1954)
Doctoral advisor	Robert Serber

Leon N. Cooper (né Kupchik; February 28, 1930 – October 23, 2024) was an American physicist and professor of Brown University. His name is associated with his work on superconductivity and neuroscience. He proposed the Cooper pair mechanism in 1956 and in 1972 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics with John Bardeen and John Robert Schrieffer for the development of the BCS theory of superconductivity.^[1]^[2]

In neuroscience, Cooper co-developed the BCM theory of synaptic plasticity.^[3]

Life

Early life and education

Leon N. Kupchick was born to a Jewish family in the Bronx, New York City on February 28, 1930.^[4]^[5] While some sources have suggested the N. stood for "Neil", it was not short for anything.^[5] His father immigrated to the United States from Belarus after the Russian Revolution, and his mother, who died when he was seven, was from Poland.^[5] His father later changed the family's surname to Cooper.^[5]

Cooper graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in 1947^[6]^[7] and received a BA in 1951,^[8] MA in 1953,^[8] and PhD in 1954 from Columbia University.^[8]^[9] His thesis was titled Mu-Mesonic Atoms and the Electromagnetic Radius of the Nucleus and his thesis advisor was Robert Serber.^[10]^[11]

Professional career

Cooper spent a year at the Institute for Advanced Study and taught at the University of Illinois and Ohio State University before coming to Brown University in 1958.^[9]

In 1974, Cooper became the Thomas J. Watson Sr. Professor of Science at Brown, and director of the Institute for Brain and Neural Systems which he founded in 1973.^[8] Along with colleague Charles Elbaum, he founded the tech company Nestor, dedicated to finding commercial applications for artificial neural networks.^[12] Nestor, along with Intel, developed the Ni1000 neural network computer chip in 1994.^[13]

Cooper carried out research at various institutions including the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Geneva, Switzerland.

Personal life and death

His first wife was Martha Kennedy, mother to his two daughters.^[5] In 1969, Cooper married Kay Allard. ^[14] He died at his home in Providence, Rhode Island, on October 23, 2024, at the age of 94.^[5]

Work

As a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Advanced Study, he collaborated with professor John Bardeen and John Robert Schrieffer who was a graduate student at the time at the University of Illinois. The later two were working on superconductivity and asked Cooper for help. Cooper had never worked on superconductivity before that. After a year, he came up with a quasiparticle, now known as Cooper pairs, made of two bounded electrons, he publishes his provisional theory in Physical Review in September 1956.^[5] In July 1957, Bardeen, Schrieffer and Cooper submitted their final theory in Physical Reviews called "Theory of superconductivty".^[5] This theory became known as the BCS theory after the authors initials. Their theory explained conventional superconductivity that was unexplained since its experimental discovery in 1911. This work earned Bardeen, Schrieffer and Cooper a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1972.^[5]

While working at Brown University, Cooper became interested in neuroscience and the process of learning. With two doctoral students, Elie Bienenstock and Paul Munro, Cooper published their theory of synaptic plasticity in 1982 in The Journal of Neuroscience. This theory became known as the BCM theory for Bienenstock, Cooper and Munro.^[5] They proposed estimated the weakening and strengthening that could occur without saturation of the connections. As synapses saturate, electrical connections become less effective, reducing saturation. Connections oscillate between saturation and unsaturation without reaching their limits. Their theory explained for how the visual cortex works and how people learn to see. Their theory became foundational in the field of neuroscience.^[5]

Memberships and honors

Fellow of the American Physical Society
Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Member of the National Academy of Sciences
Member of the American Philosophical Society
Member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
Associate member of the Neuroscience Research Program
Research fellow of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (1959–1966)
Fellow of the Guggenheim Institute (1965–66)
Nobel Prize Recipient for Physics (1972)^[8]
Co-winner (with Dr. Schrieffer) of the Comstock Prize in Physics of the National Academy of Sciences (1968)^[15]
Received the Award of Excellence, Graduate Faculties Alumni of Columbia University
Received the Descartes Medal, Academie de Paris, Université René Descartes.
Received the John Jay Award of Columbia College (1985)^[8]
Recipient of seven honorary doctorates^[8]

Publications

Cooper was the author of Science and Human Experience – a collection of essays, including previously unpublished material, on issues such as consciousness and the structure of space. (Cambridge University Press, 2014).

Cooper also wrote an unconventional liberal-arts physics textbook, originally An Introduction to the Meaning and Structure of Physics (Harper and Row, 1968)^[16] and still in print in a somewhat condensed form as Physics: Structure and Meaning (Lebanon: New Hampshire, University Press of New England, 1992).