A book review, and wishes for a happy new year

 I was fortunate enough to receive a copy of Andy Zangwill's recent biography of Phil Anderson, A Mind Over Matter:  Philip Anderson and the Physics of the Very Many.  It's a great book that I would recommend to any physics student or graduate interested in learning about one of the great scientists of the 20th century.  Zangwill does an excellent job with the difficult task of describing (in a way accessible to scientists, if not necessarily always the lay-public) the rise of solid-state physics in the last century and its transformation, with significant guidance from Anderson, into what we now call condensed matter.  This alone is reason to read the book - it's more accessible than the more formally historical (also excellent) Out of the Crystal Maze and a good pairing with Solid State Insurrection (which I discussed here).  

This history seamlessly provides context for the portrait of Anderson, a brilliant, intuitive theorist who prized profound, essential models over computational virtuosity, and who had a litany of achievements that is difficult to list in its entirety.  The person described in the book gibes perfectly with my limited direct interactions with him and the stories I heard from my thesis advisor and other Bell Labs folks.  Some lines ring particularly true (with all that says about the culture of our field):  "Anderson never took very long to decide if a physicist he had just met was worth his time and respect."

On a separate note:  Thanks for reading, and I wish you a very happy new year!  I hope that you and yours have a safe, healthy, and fulfilling 2022.