November 8, 2005

Eminent physicist sentenced to prison

This is not the sort of story one expects to read about a physics Nobel laureate:

Nobel Prize-winning physicist gets 2 years in Santa Maria crash

Associated Press

SANTA MARIA, Calif. - A Nobel Prize-winning physicist was sentenced Monday to two years in prison for killing a man and injuring seven others when his speeding Mercedes-Benz slammed into a van.

John Robert Schrieffer, 74, a Florida State University professor who once taught at the University of California, Santa Barbara, pleaded no contest July 25 to felony vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence for crashing into the Toyota van near rural Orcutt.

Schrieffer had nine prior speeding tickets and was driving on a suspended license at the time of the Sept. 24, 2004 crash. He also admitted to a criminal enhancement of causing great bodily injury to three people in the van.


Schrieffer was the "S" in the BCS theory of superconductivity, which describes conventional superconductors and is therefore highly relevant to my own research. I've never seen him in person, but it's still kind of shocking. Later in the article his colleagues protest that he's not an "extreme personality", but nine speeding tickets? He sure sounds like a reckless driver, at least.

Via Fark, where the headline writer inexplicably went for quantum tunneling as the basis for the obligatory joke rather than something on resistanceless flow.

Posted by Arcane Gazebo at November 8, 2005 5:57 PM | Tags: California, Physics
Comments

I'm sure lots of people have done this, but...

BCS = Been Caught Speeding


This wasn't exactly an expected news item...

Posted by: Mason | November 8, 2005 7:24 PM
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