Research Areas:
Condensed Matter Theory, High Temperature Superconductivity

Prof. Patrick Lee obtained his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1970. He then taught at Yale University (1970-1972) and worked at the Theoretical Physics Department of Bell Laboratories (1972-1982). In 1982, he returned to his alma mater and joined the Department of Physics. He is currently the William & Emma Rogers Professor of Physics in MIT.

Prof. Lee has made key contributions to the theory of disordered electronic systems and is a pioneer in “mesoscopic physics”, the study of small devices at low temperatures. He introduced the concept of universal conductance fluctuations to describe such devices. More recently, his research is focused on the problem of high temperature superconductivity. The starting point of this work is that the new family of superconductors is an example of the doped Mott insulator. The parent material is an antiferromagnetic insulator that is insulating due to correlation effects. Doping introduces carriers into the insulator, leading to a rich variety of novel phenomena including superconductivity. Methods of attack include many-body field theory and numerical work.

Prof. Lee was awarded the Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Physics Prize of the American Physical Society and elected Member of the US National Academy of Sciences in 1991. In 2005, he received the Dirac Medal from the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics for “his pioneering contributions to our understanding of disordered and strongly interacting many-body systems”.