Anthony Leggett obituary: physicist who brought quantum theory to the macro world

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Credit: L. Brian Stauffer, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Originally educated as a philosopher, Anthony (Tony) Leggett later switched to theoretical condensed-matter physics, and rapidly made the subject of macroscopic quantum phenomena his own. Only eight years after his PhD, he created a remarkably intuitive theory of superfluids. For this work, he was awarded the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physics. He is best known, however, for the creation of a theory that has enabled scientists to understand and harness quantum phenomena in computing. He has died aged 87.

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