Condensed-Matter and Materials Physics: Basic Research for Tomorrow’s Technology

The book is the result of the work of the Committee on Condensed-Matter and Materials Physics established by the US National Research Council Board on Physics and Astronomy. It consists of an overview and eight chapters dealing with different specific areas. In each chapter an explanation is given of the most outstanding achievements in the field. Figures, diagrams, photographs and boxes illustrating some specific topics give a quite clear feeling of the state of the art in each case. The authors make a general presentation of the real situation concerning trends, facilities and shortcomings for education and research at the beginning of the new century. Suggestions are made for directives to improve education and research accomplishments in the future. It is especially stressed that, in order to maintain the rate of production and innovation that has characterized the last 50 years of condensed matter and materials physics research, there is a need, apart from an adequate increase in allocated funding, to promote and enhance collaborative work. The numerous examples given are clear enough to illustrate that research has very often produced significant results arising from collaboration among people from different institutions, joining different projects to which they bring great expertise from traditionally different, and often distinct and mutually ignored, fields. Some examples illustrate the cycle that has played a crucial role in the development of new experimental equipment capable of measuring new properties: Basic research Applied research based on previous results of basic research Construction of new equipment using previous applied research results New basic research (not possible previously) Applied research etc. Also, it is stressed that in many cases this is the result of focusing in a particular problem the theories and models used in a different discipline. The growing importance of the computing capabilities are also stressed … modern computing and their associated visualization capabilities are now so powerful, they are beginning to provide `virtual laboratories’ that offer new ways to acquire physical insight by exploring the effects of varying physical parameters. `Nevertheless, it is clearly stated too that … real physical experiments will always be necessary…’ The book is well documented and open-minded. In consequence, it is interesting for people active in research and, in my opinion a `must read’ for those people having in their hands the responsibility of taking decisions on the future direction and funding of education and research policies, in both the short term and especially the long term.