Santa Fe Institute

Bio

Peter B. Littlewood is Associate Laboratory Director for Physical Sciences and Engineering at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne national Laboratory.

A physicist by training, Littlewood is responsible for Argonne's fundamental science capabilities in materials science, nanoscience, chemical sciences and engineering, physics and high energy physics. He works with Argonne senior leadership to manage and integrate the laboratory's strategies, with a particular focus on materials for energy. He also holds an appointment as Professor of Physics in the James Franck Institute at the University of Chicago.

He came to Argonne from Cambridge University, United Kingdom, where he was Head of the Cavendish Laboratory and the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge. He previously headed the Theory of Condensed Matter group at the Cavendish Laboratory. During a 2003-2004 sabbatical leave, he was Matthias Scholar at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Prior to joining Cambridge, he worked at Bell Laboratories from 1980 through 1997, finishing his time there as head of Theoretical Physics Research. He was named a distinguished member of Bell Labs' technical staff in 1989. He has been a consultant for Los Alamos National Laboratory, the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

His previous research activities include the dynamics of collective transport (charge-density wave, Wigner crystal, vortex lattice); phenomenology and microscopic theory of high-temperature superconductors, transition metal oxides, and other correlated electronic systems; and optical properties of highly excited semiconductors. He also has interests in theoretical engineering, including holographic storage, optical fibers and devices.

A holder of six patents, he has published more than 200 articles in scientific journals and has given more than 100 invited talks at international conferences, universities and laboratories. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of London, the Institute of Physics, the TWAS, Trinity College Cambridge and the American Physical Society.

He holds a bachelor's degree in Natural Sciences (Physics) and a Ph.D. in Physics, both from the University of Cambridge.