Past Member

Leon N. Cooper

Affiliation

Math/NS

From the Nobel Foundation:

Professor Cooper is Director of Brown University's Center for Neural Science. This Center was founded in 1973 to study animal nervous systems and the human brain. Professor Cooper served as the first director with an interdisciplinary staff drawn from the Departments of Applied Mathematics, Biomedical Sciences, Linguistics and Physics. Today, Cooper, with members of the Brown Faculty, postdoctoral fellows and graduate students with interests in the neural and cognitive sciences, is working towards an understanding of memory and other brain functions, and thus formulating a scientific model of how the human mind works.

Professor Cooper has received many forms of recognition for his work in 1972, he received the Nobel Prize in Physics (with J. Bardeen and J.R. Schrieffer) for his studies on the theory of superconductivity completed while still in his 20s…

...Professor Cooper is Co-founder and Co-chairman of Nestor, Inc., an industry leader in applying neural-network systems to commercial and military applications. Nestor's adaptive pattern-recognition and risk-assessment systems simulated in small conventional computers learn by example to accurately classify complex patterns such as targets in sonar, radar or imaging systems, to emulate human decisions in such applications as mortgage origination and to assess risks.

"Leon N. Cooper: Biographical," Nobel Foundation (1972)

Nobel Laureate, Physics Prize, 1972

Dates at IAS

Member
Math/NS

Degrees

Columbia University
Ph.D.
1954

Honors

1977
Déscartes Medal Académie de Paris, Université René Déscartes
1974
Award of Excellence Graduate Faculties Alumni of Columbia University
1972
Nobel Prize in Physics
1968
Comstock Prize (with JR Shrieffer) NAS