Oral History: John M. Rowell (2016)

John M. Rowell received the B.A., M.A., and the D. Phil. degrees in physics from Oxford University, Oxford, England, in 1957 and 1961, respectively. He joined Bell Laboratories in 1961 after carrying out his graduate studies at Oxford University, Oxford, England. With P. W. Anderson, he made the first observation of the Josephson effect and demonstrated the magnetic field sensitivity of the Josephson current. He held the first patent granted for logic applications of the Josephson effect. With W. L. McMillan, he developed tunneling spectroscopy, which determines in detail the electron-phonon interaction that causes superconductivity, at least in the low-Tc materials. In a collaboration with J. Geerk, M. Gurvitch, and M. Washington, he invented the niobium/aluminum Josephson junction process that is now the basis of all low-Tc digital electronics and magnetic sensors. He held a series of management positions at Bell Laboratories and in 1983 he joined Bell Communications Research (Bellcore) as Assistant Vice President of the Solid State Science and Technology Laboratory. He joined Conductus, a start-up superconducting electronics company, in 1989 as Chief Technical Officer. In 1997, he was appointed as the Materials Institute Professor at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA, and since 2001, he has been a Visiting Professor at Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA. Dr. Rowell is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and in 1989, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. He became a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1994 and of the National Academy of Engineering in 1995. In 1978, he was the recipient of the Fritz London Memorial Low-Temperature Physics Prize for his work on the Josephson effect, tunneling, and superconductivity.