Nevill Francis Mott | Biography

Nevill Francis Mott was born in 1905, in Leeds, England, the first of two children of Charles Francis and Lilian Mary (Reynolds) Mott, both of whom worked for the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University under J. J. Thomson, who had just discovered the electron. In 1927, he received a baccalaureate degree in mathematics from Cambridge, where he did his first work in theoretical physics, studying the scattering of electrons by nuclei. He continued those studies during a 1928 term in Copenhagen with Niels Bohr, who in 1913 had put forth the theoretical model of the atom. Mott went on to teach at Manchester University during the 1929-1930 school year and received an introduction to solid state physics from William Lawrence Bragg, who with his father, William Henry Bragg, won a Nobel Prize for his work in X-ray crystallography. In 1930, Mott returned to Cambridge, received a master's degree, became a lecturer at Cambridge's Gonville and Caius College and made his first big discovery in the scattering of particles by atoms and nuclei. These collisions between charged particles are now known as Mott scattering.

Mott became Melville Wills Professor of Theoretical Physics at Bristol in 1933, and held this position until he became chair of the physics department there in 1948. Mott's group of researchers at Bristol led the world in the development of solid state physics. Mott's approach focused on using physics to explain the properties of materials, particularly metals and alloys.

Mott's studies of electrons in metals and dislocations and defects in crystals resulted in the 1936 publication of the seminal work, Theory of the Properties of Metals and Alloys, which he wrote with Harry Jones. Mott, with Gurney, also became the first to formulate a theory explaining how photographic plates work, an explanation that led to improvements in the field.

Mott then became interested in semiconductors, which are materials that can act as insulators or conductors and are used in many electronic devices. In 1940, Mott wrote Electronic Processes in Ionic Crystals with Gurney, and did important work on transition metals, becoming the first to theorize that all electrons in such materials are involved in electrical conductivity. He also postulated that certain non-metals can act like metals when placed under pressure and that all electrons become free to move at once; these processes are called Mott transitions.

In 1954, Mott became Cavendish Professor of Physics at Cambridge. Mott was involved in confirming by observations with the electron microscope the existence of moving dislocations, or tiny defects, responsible for hardening in alloys. During the mid-1960s, Mott became interested in non-crystalline, or amorphous, semiconductors, a research shift that stemmed in part from his work on metal-insulator transitions and eventually brought him the Nobel Prize in 1977. He shared the award with Philip Warren Anderson and John Van Vleck. Mott added considerably to science's knowledge of the electronic properties of amorphous (disordered) materials such as glasses, alloys and impure semiconductors, where atoms are not arranged in regular arrays. Adding impurities to semiconductors, for example, can improve conductivity.

Mott married in 1930 and had two daughters. During his career, he was involved in scientific publishing and a number of social and philosophical issues, including the control of nuclear armaments. Mott was knighted in 1962. He died in 1996.