Passages: Nobel Prize winner and Brown professor of physics Leon N. Cooper

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] - Nobel Prize winner Leon N. Cooper, a professor of physics at Brown University for more than five decades, died on Wednesday, Oct. 23, at age 94.

Cooper's daughter, Coralie Cooper, confirmed his death to the New York Times.

Cooper served as a professor at Brown since 1958 and retired from teaching in 2014. He shared the 1972 Nobel Prize in Physics with physicists John Bardeen and Robert Schrieffer for developing a theory explaining how certain materials can conduct electricity without resistance - a phenomenon called superconductivity. The theory, called the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) theory, transformed condensed matter physics, paving the way for advancements in understanding quantum phenomena, developing new materials and inspiring further research into exotic states of matter.

In 2013, during Brown's 245th Commencement, Cooper received the Susan Culver Rosenberger Medal, the highest honor the Brown University faculty can bestow.

"Leon Cooper is a giant in the world of physics, yet he wears his mantle of accomplishments lightly," James Valles, a professor of physics, said at the time. "It is extraordinary how engaged in Brown and accessible Leon has remained since winning the Nobel Prize in 1972. He has served as an effective mentor and adviser to countless students and junior faculty over the years. He has burnished our reputation by his scientific prowess and through the many students he has reached over his 55-year career at Brown."

Born in 1930, Cooper grew up in New York City where he attended the Bronx High School of Science before earning a bachelor's degree (1951) and a Ph.D. in physics (1954) from Columbia University. Before joining the Brown University faculty in 1958, Cooper conducted research at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and taught at the University of Illinois and the Ohio State University.

Cooper's work on BCS Theory began in the mid-1950s, when he was still in his 20s. He teamed up with Bardeen and Schrieffer, and the trio set out to tackle the problem of superconductivity, a phenomenon discovered in 1911 but poorly understood during subsequent decades. Cooper and his colleagues succeeded in solving the mysteries of superconductivity where many of the greatest minds in physics - including Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr - had been unsuccessful.

The group's study, titled the "Theory of Superconductivity," was published in the Physical Review in 1957. A key discovery from Cooper was that, under specific conditions, electrons in a metal could form pairs despite their natural repulsion. This pairing occurs because the motion of one electron subtly affects the environment in the metal, attracting a second electron. As a result, these paired electrons move smoothly through the material without resistance, allowing superconductors to conduct electricity freely. These pairs would later be named Cooper pairs.