James Sauls

James Sauls is a theoretical physicist and joint Professor at Northwestern University and Louisiana State University.

He received his B.Sc. in Engineering Physics at Colorado School of Mines in Golden (1975), then moved to New York to do graduate work at SUNY-Stony Brook, where he received a Ph.D. in physics in 1980. He did postdoctoral research at Princeton University in New Jersey (1980-83), at the Nordic Institute of Theoretical Atomic Physics in Copenhagen, and at the Helsinki University of Technology (1983-84), then joined the Princeton physics faculty (1983-1987). Since 1987 he has been Professor of Physics at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. He is also co-director of the Northwestern-Fermilab Center for Applied Physics and Superconducting Technologies (CAPST).

Sauls studies the physical world by combining mathematical analysis and observation. He formulates and applies physical laws to relate observations of physical phenomena, such as superconductivity, to fundamental properties of matter and radiation. Sauls’ research has primarily focused on nuclear theory and theoretical condensed matter physics.

Sauls received the 1994 Max Planck Research Prize in Theoretical Physics, the 2012 John Bardeen Prize in Theoretical Superconductivity, and the 2017 Fritz London Memorial Prize in Low Temperature Physics. In 1998, he was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society in the Division of Condensed Matter Physics. In 2014, he was named Distinguished Lecturer of the University of Edinburgh.