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By Helga Nowotny
The invention of high-temperature superconductivity used to be hailed as a huge clinical leap forward, inducing an extraordinary wave of pleasure and expectation one of the medical neighborhood and within the foreign press. This e-book units this learn step forward in context, and reconstructs the historical past of the invention. The authors examine the emergence of this new examine box and how its improvement was once formed through scientists and technology coverage makers. in addition they learn a number of the institutional and nationwide settings during which the learn used to be undertaken in addition to contemplating the clinical backgrounds and motivations of researchers who entered the sector following the unique discovery.
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Additional info for After the Breakthrough: The Emergence of High-Temperature Superconductivity as a Research Field
Sample text
Bednorz et al, 1987a) The new era of hightemperature superconductivity had begun. Miiller's and Bednorz's discovery of HTS violated expectations and conventional scientific wisdom in at least three ways: the discoverers themselves; the site of the discovery; and the scientific ideas involved. 32 The context of the discovery The discoverers were relative outsiders to the field of superconductivity. Miiller was an experienced, acknowledged specialist on perovskites; Bednorz was a crystallographer.
The excitement of the IBM discovery spread rapidly through scientific circles as more and more groups joined the feverish hunt for new materials. This time the Houston-Alabama collaboration was first, due to its ingenious idea of replacing lanthanum with the rare earth element yttrium and to the Alabama group's expertise in preparing ceramic oxides. In early January 1987, Paul Chu found YBaCuO superconducting at about 90 K and immediately applied for a patent on the new compound. But, not submitting his paper to Physical Review Letters until February 6, Chu was confronted with a major problem inherent in the conventional scientific publishing system: the possibility of information leaks or publication delays.
More manageable materials were available for many commercial applications; other potential applications seemed to depend on progress in other fields, such as fusion. Commercial competition from existing, matured technologies was fierce. As a result, several major research projects were scaled down or canceled in the 1970s and 1980s. Miiller and Bednorfs unlikely discovery That was the situation in 1983, when, at the IBM Riischlikon Laboratory in Zurich, Switzerland, Alex Miiller and Georg Bednorz began investigating ceramic oxides, seeking new superconducting materials with higher critical temperatures.