Bernd T. Matthias

Bernd T. Matthias (June 8, 1918 – October 27, 1980

Education and career Bernd Theodor Matthias was born in Frankfurt, Germany on June 8, 1918. He received his PhD in physics from the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich in 1943. He also earned a D.Sc. from the University of Lausanne in 1947. Matthias was also a member of the JASON defense advisory group.

In 1954, he came up with his famous Matthias' rules, a series of empirical guidelines on how to find superconductors.

Honors and awards In 1965 he was elected to both the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. and James C. McGroddy Prize for New Materials (1979).

The University of California, San Diego has an endowed chair in physics named for him; the Bernd T. Matthias Chair in Physics is currently held by M. Brian Maple, who received his PhD under Mathias.

The Bernd T. Matthias Prize for Superconducting Materials was created in 1989 and is awarded annually at the M2S (Materials and Mechanisms of Superconductivity) Conference to recognize innovative contributions to the material aspects of superconductivity. The award was originally sponsored by Bell Labs; since 2000 it has been sponsored by the Texas Center for Superconductivity at the University of Houston, whose founding director, Paul C. W. Chu, was Matthias' former student.