Zachary Fisk
Zachary Fisk (born September 3, 1941) is an American physicist who specializes in condensed matter. He earned his AB in physics from Harvard University in 1964 and a PhD from the University of California, San Diego in 1969, working under Bernd T. Matthias.
Fisk’s early career included time at the University of Chicago, UC San Diego, and Los Alamos National Laboratory. After Matthias’ death in 1980, Fisk joined Los Alamos as a fellow in 1981. He later moved to Florida State University in 1994 to work at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory. He taught at FSU (1996–2003), UC Davis (2003–2006), and then joined the University of California, Irvine in 2006, where he is a distinguished professor and professor emeritus in the physics and astronomy department.
His research helped unlock the physics of heavy-fermion materials and novel superconductors. He and his colleagues discovered superconductivity in uranium compounds such as UBe13 and UPt3, contributing to the field of heavy-fermion superconductivity. He also helped identify a class of materials called kondo insulators, including Ce3Bi4Pt3, and he refined techniques for growing high-quality single crystals using flux growth.
Fisk has received several awards, including the International Prize for New Materials (1990), the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award (1991), and the Bernd T. Matthias Prize (2015). He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Physical Society.
Personal life: Fisk was first married to Mary Bayley Fisk from 1964 to 1979; they had a daughter, Rebekah. He later married Jehanne Telheit-Fisk, an art historian, and they had a daughter, Samantha; Jehanne died in 2002. He enjoys reading, biking, hiking, and running.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 10:14 (CET).