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John Ziman
Born	(1925-05-16)16 May 1925 Cambridge, UK
Died	2 January 2005(2005-01-02) (aged 79) Aylesbury, England
Spouse(s)	Rosemary Dixon Joan Solomon
Awards	Fellow of the Royal Society (1967)
Scientific career
Institutions	University of Bristol, University of Oxford, Victoria University of Wellington, University of Cambridge

was a New Zealand physicist and humanist who worked in the area of condensed matter physics. He was a spokesman for science, as well as a teacher and author.

Ziman was born in Cambridge, England, in 1925. His parents were Solomon Netheim Ziman and, Nellie Frances, née Gaster. The family emigrated to New Zealand when Ziman was a baby. He obtained his early education at Hamilton High School and the University of Wellington. He obtained his PhD from Balliol College, Oxford and did his early research on the theory of electrons in liquid metals at the University of Cambridge.

In 1964 he was appointed professor of theoretical physics at University of Bristol, where he wrote his Elements Of Advanced Quantum Theory (1969) which explains the rudiments of quantum field theory with an elementary condensed matter slant. During this period, his interests shifted towards the philosophy of science. He argued about the social dimension of science, and the social responsibility of scientists in numerous essays and books.

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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 there. 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.

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. He 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, UK 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, again 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

Career

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 MHL Pryce and Sir Francis Simon 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 exmaple 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' was carried out at this time and led to his authoring 'Principles of the theory of solids'

During this research he was working on what he is arguably 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 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 shortly before his death. He believed the understanding 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 build around the communication system of jounrnals and referees.

Personal Life

In 1949 Ziman married Rosemary Milnes Dixon and they adopted four children.

He married twice, to Rosemary Dixon in 1951 and secondly to Joan Solomon, and was survived by her and three of his four children.

See also

• Nearly free electron model

Selected publications

• Ziman, John (1960). Electrons and phonons: The theory of transport phenomena in solids. Clarendon. ISBN 978-0-19-850779-6.
• Ziman, John (1963). Electrons in metals: A short guide to the Fermi surface. Taylor & Francis. OCLC 13129448.
• Ziman, John (1968). Public Knowledge: Essay Concerning the Social Dimension of Science. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-06894-9.
• Ziman, John (1969). Elements Of Advanced Quantum Theory. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-09949-3.
• Ziman, John (1972). Principles of the Theory of Solids. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-29733-2.
• Ziman, John (1976). The Force of Knowledge: The Scientific Dimension of Society. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-09917-2.
• Ziman, John (1978). Reliable Knowledge: an Exploration of the Grounds for Belief in Science. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-40670-3.
• An Introduction to Science Studies: The Philosophical and Social Aspects of Science and Technology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, ISBN 978-0-521-34680-1
• Ziman, John (1994). Prometheus Bound: Science in a dynamic steady state. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-43430-0.
• Ziman, John (1995). Of one mind: the collectivization of science. AIP Press (American Institute of Physics). ISBN 978-1-56396-065-9.
• Ziman, John (2000). Real Science: What It Is and What It Means. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-77229-7.