Allen M. Goldman

Allen Marshall Goldman (October 18, 1937 – May 16, 2025) was an American experimental condensed matter physicist, known for his research on electronic transport properties of superconductors and for the eponymous Carlson-Goldman mode involving collective oscillations in superconductors.

Life and career Goldman was born on October 18, 1937. He graduated in 1954 from the Bronx High School of Science and received in 1958 his bachelor's degree in physics and chemistry from Harvard University. In 1965, he graduated from Stanford University with a Ph.D. in physics. His Ph.D. thesis Properties of superconductors and selected magnetic materials in the configuration of thin films was supervised by William M. Fairbank.

Goldman became in 1965 an assistant professor in the physics department of the University of Minnesota. From 1966 to 1970, he was a Sloan Research Fellow. In the 1970s, he discovered, with his doctoral student Richard V. Carlson, collective oscillations (Carlson-Goldman modes) in thin superconducting films. Such modes are coupled collective oscillations of a thin superconducting film's superconducting part (i.e. Cooper pairs) and the film's quasiparticles. Goldman was one of the pioneers in the study of phase transitions in two-dimensional systems, including the Kosterlitz-Thouless transition in thin superconducting films and networks of Josephson transitions. There he was a full professor from 1975 to 1992 and an Institute of Technology Distinguished Professor from 1992 to 2008 with appointment to regent's professor in 2008. Goldman was elected in 1982 a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in 1984 a fellow of the American Physical Society, and in 2007 a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He was also the head of the University of Minnesota's school of physics and astronomy from 1996 to 2009. He became regents professor emeritus.

Goldman was known for his experiments involving "superconductivity, in the configuration of thin films, with an emphasis on the effects of disorder and dimensional constraints."

In 2002, he received the Fritz London Memorial Prize.

From 2006 to 2008, he was vice-chair and then chair of the Division of Condensed Matter Physics of the American Physical Society.

Selected publications Books (pbk reprint of 1983 1st edition)