Title: Professor Research Area: Experimental Condensed Matter Physics E-mail: gms@oxy.edu Homepage: Not available. Phone: (323) 259-2800 Office: HSC 118

George is an experimental condensed matter physicist interested in the interplay between superconductivity and magnetism in novel materials at low temperatures and in high magnetic fields. Much of his work has been on intermetallic actinide "heavy-fermion'' compounds in which the conduction electrons behave as if their masses are 100 to 1000 times larger than they are in empty space. Heavy--fermion compounds are very magnetic yet several also become superconductors at low temperatures (about one degree above absolute zero). This fact is surprising since strong magnetism is very effective at destroying conventional superconductivity, a fact which suggests that these materials exhibit a new, unconvenational type of superconductivity. His general research goals are to identify and map out phase transitions in these systems and to identify the nature and symmetry of their ground states. Recent specific studies have been made of the electrical resistivity of the heavy--fermion superconductor UBe13 in high magnetic fields, of the upper and lower critical fields of LuNi2B2C, and of the flux pinning behavior of BSCCO (2212), a high temperature superconductor.

One of the tools that George uses to study these materials is the "cantilever magnetometer". Although commercial versions of this device are now available, a slightly simplified version can be easily assembled by students in about an hour. These devices offer a very high precision approach to the study of the magnetic properties of materials. George is also developing a dilatometer to measure the magnetostriction of novel materials in the very high magnetic field (50-100 tesla) pulse magnets at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (NHMFL) at Los Alamos National Laboratory. George maintains an active laboratory at Occidental and regularly travels to the NHMFL sites at Florida State University and Los Alamos National Laboratory to pursue his studies.

George's research has been supported by grants from the Research Corporation, from the Petroleum Research Fund, and from the National Science Foundation. After receiving his Ph.D. at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1985 George was an IBM Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT, taught at Bowdoin College and Tufts University, and has been a Visiting Scientist at the NHMFL at Los Alamos and at the old Francis Bitter National Magnet Laboratory at MIT. George has been at Occidental College since 1992.