Sir Nevill Mott

Sir Nevill Mott was born in Leeds, England, on September 30th, 1905. He was educated at Clifton College, Bristol and entered St. John's College, Cambridge in 1924, where he studied mathematics and theoretical physics. At the Cavendish Laboratory he worked on collision theory and nuclear problems. In 1933 he became the chair of theoretical physics at Bristol, and changed his research interests to the properties of metals and semiconductors. His work included theoretical studies of transition metals, rectification and hardness of alloys and also the physics of photographic images.

In the 1960s, Mott's studies of electrical conduction in various metals led him to explore the conductivity potential of amorphous materials, which are so called because their atomic structures are irregular or unstructured. He devised formulas describing the transitions that glass and other amorphous substances can make between electrically conductive (metallic) states and insulating (non-metallic) states, thereby functioning as semiconductors. These glassy substances, which are relatively simple and cheap to produce, eventually replaced more expensive crystalline semiconductors in many electronic switching and memory devices, and this in turn led to more affordable electronic devices, such as personal computers. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1977 (shared with Anderson and van Vleck), "for their fundamental theoretical investigations of the electronic structure of magnetic and disordered systems".

In 1954 Mott was appointed Cavendish Professor of Physics, a post that he held until 1971, serving on numerous government and university committees. He also became the Master of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, from 1959-66. He was President of the International Union of Physics from 1951 to 1957. Mott was knighted in 1962.

Outside physics research he took a leading part in the reform of science education in the United Kingdom and was actively involved in dealing with educational problems. In 1930 he married Ruth Eleanor Horder. They had two daughters and three grandchildren. He died on August 8, 1996.