Andrew D. Huxley

Andrew D. Huxley (born 1966) is a chair of the physics department of Edinburgh University. Of no relation to Sir Andrew F. Huxley (the English physiologist and biophysicist), Prof. Andrew D. Huxley is of renown in the field of condensed matter physics. While at the CEA laboratory in Grenoble, Huxley was involved in the revolutionary discovery of superconductivity in the ferromagnet UGe₂ under applied pressure, in collaboration with a team at Cambridge University . This was followed up by a series of breakthroughs in another ferromagnetic material, URhGe, which was found to turn superconducting under the application of an external magnetic field. This emergence of an unconventional superconducting state by the application of an external tuning parameter such as magnetic field or pressure is hypothesised to be closely related to a 'Quantum critical point' (QCP) - a special phase transition that occurs at temperatures approaching zero kelvins. Quantum fluctuations are enhanced at the QCP, destabilising the conventional phase that dominates under ambient conditions, making conditions propitious for the emergence of a novel unconventional phase such as superconductivity, or possibly even more exotic states.

Huxley earned a BA from Churchill College, Cambridge University, an MS from the University of Pennsylvania, and a PhD from Cambridge University. He was subsequently a postdoctorate fellow and then a scientist at CEA, Grenoble before joining Edinburgh University as a Professor of Physics in 2006. Huxley is yet another of the prestigious alumnae of the Quantum Matter (formerly the Low Temperature Physics) group in the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge University that have gone on to become leading physicists. The current leader of the group, Prof. Gilbert (Gil) Lonzarich, is considered by many to be the visionary behind the burgeoning field within experimental condensed matter research that involves the discovery of novel phases in the vicinity of quantum critical points.