Session K2 - The Early Days of Solid State Physics.
INVITED session, Tuesday afternoon, March 04
Ballroom B, Austin Convention Center
The theoretical basis of the Mott insulator phenomenon was codified by Mott in his 1949 and 1956 papers, following reasoning suggested by Peierls in 1937. At the time it was well accepted by theorists and formed the basis of my theories of antiferromagnetic superexchange and of magnetic impurities, as well as of the Hubbard Model for magnetic metals. But it seems not to have been part of the education of many condensed matter physicists--it diid not appear in basic texts until the '70's--and to have been considered somewhat controversial even into the '80's. I will discuss reasons for this situation and some of the convoluted history of the subject.