Today in History -  April 17, 1986-  first publication of High T-C Superconductivity in Ceramic. A breakthrough discovery was made in the field of superconductivity. Alex Muller and Georg Bednorz, researchers at the IBM Research Laboratory in Ruschlikon, Switzerland, created a brittle ceramic compound that superconducted at the highest temperature then known: 30 K. What made this discovery so remarkable was that ceramics are normally insulators. They don’t conduct electricity well at all. So, researchers had not considered them as possible high-temperature superconductor candidates. The Lanthanum, Barium, Copper and Oxygen compound that Muller and Bednorz synthesized, behaved in a not-as-yet-understood way. The discovery of this first of the superconducting copper-oxides (cuprates) won the 2 men the Nobel Prize in Physics the following year in 1987.

For more information, see the Engineering Pathway’s educational resources on superconductivity or view our Ceramics Engineering Education and Materials Engineering Education community sites.

Also on this date in 1976, Helios B makes closest approach to the sun.