User:Jonwnz/sandbox/John Ziman

John Michael Ziman was a theoretical physicist who worked on the application of quantum theory to disordered solids and liquid metals. He was head of the Physics Department at Bristol University in the UK and created a theoretical physics group in the department. As a humanist he championed the role of science as a source of societal ethics and considered science as a collective human enterprise. He was a respected academic and wrote numerous books on both theoretical physics and the role of science in society.

Early Life
Ziman was born in Cambridge, England to Solomon Netheim Ziman and Nellie Frances, née Gaster, who emigrated to a farm in Cambridge, New Zealand when he was a baby. When his father retired they left the farm and moved to what was then the small town of Hamilton. Ziman is quoted as saying that he had a happy childhood surrounded by books and appreciated that his parents prevented him from attending university a year early as this allowed him to study humanities. He attended Hamilton Boys' High School and lived in New Zealand until he was 21.

Education
In 1943 he started university at Victoria University College in Wellington, New Zealand. His final year included experimental research where he conducted a study of the reflection coefficient of the ionosphere and he graduated with an MSc degree in Physics with first-class honours.

In 1947 he left New Zealand and attended Balliol College, Oxford, England as an undergraduate, although being ahead of most of the curriculum meant that he was reading such theoretical physics works as Dirac's Quantum Mechanics, even though they were not part of the course. In 1949 he gained a degree in Mathematics with first-class honours.

In Oct 1949 he started a DPhil on the general topic of anti-ferromagnetism at Clarendon Laboratory, Oxford working with GS Rushbrooke and KWH Stevens and completed it in 1952.

Theoretical physics
His first junior lectureship came in Mathematics in 1951-53 and was followed by a research fellowship from Pressed Steel Co. Ltd. After consultation with Maurice Pryce and Sir Francis Simon, he joined the low-temperature group where he produced several papers on liquid helium, lattice conduction and electrical conduction in metals.

He moved to Cambridge in 1954 to work as a physics lecturer and became a Fellow of King's College. He continued to produce a series of papers on the properties of crystalline metals. He also took a philosophical stance with his work. An example of his attitude to science is present in this quote from 'Electrons and phonos':

"Individual scientific facts are the leaves and twigs of a great tree. They must be connected downwards, into smaller and larger branches, into the limbs, and then into the trunk itself. To visualize the tree, we must see the connexions. At each major fork, we need to comprehend in sufficient detail all that is borne above it. But a unified picture can only be made by one person comprehending the whole scene. … The recent tendency has been … numerous, short, review articles, in which the whole picture is as clear as in a jumbled jig-saw puzzle in which each piece is painted by a different artist. There is need for treatises covering, in reasonable detail, up to the level of active research, the major branches into which the subject has divided."

His work on the nearly free electron model was carried out at this time and led to his authoring 'Principles of the theory of solids'.

During this research he worked on what he is best known for: the application of quantum mechanics to the transport of liquid metals. For his contributions he was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society in 1967.

He then spent a year in Australia where he met autodidact Peter Lloyd. When Ziman returned to the UK in 1964 and moved to Bristol, joining the Physics Department, he brought Lloyd with him. Together with Derek Greenwood they formed the theoretical physics group which led to the development of the metals research at Bristol University. John Alcock, Michael Berry, Noel Cottingham, Robert Evans, Balazs Gyorffy and Brian Pollard later joined this group.

Ziman continued his research throughout the 1960s and 1970s and his last major published work, Models of disorder: the theoretical physics of homogeneously disordered systems was released in 1979. After this project he announced:

"I may perhaps be forgiven if I do not take the matter further, and take the opportunity of a natural break to announce that this is, as far as I am concerned, THE END."

Social aspects of science
Overlapping with his work on theoretical physics was his science studies that he undertook from 1963 until his death. He believed the understanding of how science worked lay as much in sociology as philosophy, a groundbreaking idea when he wrote about it in 1964. He produced a book on the subject in 1968 which described a model of science built around the communication system of journals and referees.

In 1982 he took early voluntary retirement and moved to London to live with Joan Solomon, who he later married. He was invited to be a visiting Professor in the Department of Social and Economic Studies at Imperial College, which he used as an academic base in which to complete his research and write on a part-time basis. In 1986 he supplemented this with work for the Science Policy Support Group as its director.

In 1992, aged 66, he retired to the country village of Oakley near Oxford.

He wrote several books up until 2000 when he released his final book, whilst he was alive, Real science: what it is and what it means. Science in Civic Society was released posthumously by his widow, Joan Salomon.

Awards
Ziman's alma mater, Victoria University, made him an honorary DSc and the Royal Society appointed him to the Rutherford Memorial Lectureship.

Personal Life
In 1949 Ziman married Rosemary Milnes Dixon and they adopted four children, two boys and two girls. In 1982 he left Bristol to live in London with Joan Solomon, his second cousin on his mother's side. On the death of his wife Rosemary in 2001 he proceeded to marry Joan in 2002.