Herbert Fr?柝ich ― A Physicist Ahead of His Time

This biography provides a stimulating and coherent blend of scientific and personal narratives describing the many achievements of the theoretical physicist Herbert Frohlich. For more than half a century, Frohlich was an internationally renowned and much respected figure who exerted a decisive influence, often as a ‘man ahead of his time’, in fields as diverse as meson theory and biology. Although best known for his contributions to the theory of dielectrics and superconductivity, he worked in many other fields, his most important legacy being the pioneering introduction quantum field-theoretical methods into condensed matter physics in 1952, which revolutionised the subsequent development of the subject. Gerard Hyland has written an absorbing and informative account, in which Herbert Frohlich’s magnetic personality shines through.

Gerard Hyland was born in Birkenhead, Merseyside, UK in 1942, entered the University of Liverpool in 1961 and was Frohlich’s last doctoral student, 1965-68. He taught theoretical physics at the University of Warwick 1968-2001, was consultant to the EU on the thermophysics of nuclear fuels and high temperature superconductors, 1980-2001 and in 1997 was elected a member of the International Institute of Biophysics in Neuss-Holzheim, Germany. He maintained close contact with Frohlich, collaborating with him on a number of research topics and contributing to his two Festschrifts.