Dr John Waldram

John Waldram is an Emeritus Fellow whose research has been in the field of low temperature physics, and particularly superconductivity. His Ph D was undertaken in the Royal Society Mond Laboratory, beginning in 1959 under Brian Pippard, and concerned the properties of superconductors at microwave frequencies, which proved to be of considerable importance in establishing the recently proposed microscopic theory of superconductivity. He also worked extensively on the effects predicted in 1962 by his contemporary in the Mond, the Nobel Prize winner Brian Josephson.  After the unexpected discovery in 1987 of superconductivity at the relatively high temperature of 93 K, he was appointed Physics Co-Director of the newly established Interdisciplinary Research Centre in Superconductivity in West Cambridge, and became much concerned with the problem of understanding the basic physics of high temperature superconductors (which is still not completely resolved). He retired in 2002.

In Pembroke he was Director of Studies in Physics for thirty-four years (during which he had the pleasure of teaching both Mike Payne and Nigel Cooper), and was one of the ‘gang of three’ who struggled for ten years during the 1970s to get women admitted to the College. In the Cavendish Laboratory he was Chairman of the Teaching Committee for two lengthy periods.