Pilani: Prof Douglas Osheroff, winner of Nobel Prize in Physics in 1996 and presently, Professor at Stanford University, US, delivered a lecture at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani on Sunday, February 14, 2010. Title of his lecture was 'Scientific Discovery: A Nobel Laureate's experiences'.

Prof Osheroff began the talk by recalling his childhood and said that an electromagnetic coil, which his father constructed for him by winding wire around a nail, fascinated him.

This generated an interest in electricity and magnetism in him at the age of six itself. In fact, he took the electric motors out of his toys by dismantling them. At eight, he discovered Faraday's Laws while playing with ignition coil given to him by his father. He used to generate high voltage using the coil.

Prof Osheroff said that his early childhood experiments involved elements of danger. He said that on one occasion his makeshift acetylene 'miners' lamp blew up in the basement of his house, embedding shards of glass in the side of his face, narrowly missing his right eye.

At the age of 12, he made rifles and used gunpowder. Prof Osheroff said, "Once he nearly blinded" when playing with rifles and gunpowder as his gun blew off. His free hours were occupied by many mechanical, chemical and engineering projects, culminating in the construction of a 100keV x-ray machine during his senior year in high school.

Prof Osheroff said that in his high school, he really excelled in physics and chemistry classes, though he liked physics much more than chemistry.

He paid tributes to his chemistry teacher, William Hock who left upon him a deep impression by introducing him to physical sciences. Prof Osheroff did his undergraduate studies at Caltech University.

He said that the two years course at Caltech under Prof Feynman was extremely important for his education and development of his physical intuition.

In the third year of undergraduate studies at Caltech, he spent time with Infrared Astronomy Group. Together with other astronomers, he was one of the first to see the center of our galaxy.

Dr. Osheroff joined Cornell University for his doctoral work where he discovered super fluidity (ability to flow without friction, a phenomena that comes closest to the concept of perpetual motion) in Helium 3, which is a rarer form of Helium.

He used to work 80-100 hours per week during his Cornell days. Prof Osheroff recalled his excitement in this discovery and subsequent research they carried out at Cornell.

In particular, he recalled calling his supervisor Prof David Lee (who also shared the Nobel Prize with him along with Prof Richardson) at 2:40 a.m. to inform him about exciting results, which confirmed pairing of two Helium 3 atoms. This pairing is crucial to the phenomena of super fluidity in Helium 3.

Recalling his experiences, Prof Osheroff said that most scientific discoveries could not be anticipated. For this, he cited the examples of discovery of superconductivity by Kamerlingh Onnes in 1911 and the discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation by Penzias and Wilson in 1964.

Besides research and teaching, Prof Osheroff has a passion for photography and gardening. He also teaches a course on photography among other courses at Stanford. To a question on photography activities, he said, "I am not doing as much photography as I wish to."

During the question period that followed the lecture, one comment Prof Osheroff said, "I have been fortunate to have had excellent graduate students, and to be able to teach bright undergraduates. We should allow the students to make mistakes; otherwise, you train to produce only technicians."

During his visit to BITS Pilani, Prof Osheroff met the Physics Group faculty and students informally and he said that he enjoyed the meeting. Physics Association and BITS Model United Nations organized Prof Osheroff's visit.