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Tribute to the memory of Maurice Rice

Prof. Thomas Maurice Rice, Professor at ETH Zurich, Fellow of the Royal Society and Member of the National Academy, passed away on July 18th 2024 at the age of 85.

Maurice Rice was born on January 26th 1939 in Dundalk, Ireland, as the second son of James and Maureen Rice. He grew up in Dundalk with his two siblings and attended Coláiste Rís, a local Christian Brothers School. At the young age of 17, he began his undergraduate studies in physics at the University College Dublin. His academic journey took an important turn in 1960, when he moved to the University of Cambridge to pursue his Ph.D. under the guidance of Volker Heine. At Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory, Maurice first encountered Phil Anderson, a meeting that ignited his enduring interest in condensed matter physics and led to many fruitful collaborations in the years to come.

Following his Ph.D., Maurice Rice undertook postdoctoral research at the University of California, San Diego, where he joined Walter Kohn’s group. It was during this time in Southern California that he met Helen Spreiter, whom he married in 1966. That same year, he joined the Theory Group at Bell Labs in New Jersey, eventually becoming its head. Bell Labs’ collaborative and intellectually stimulating environment, where experts on virtually every subject could be found just down the hall, profoundly influenced Maurice’s approach to science. During this period, he met again Phil Anderson and collaborated with many other colleagues, including Bill Brinkman, Bert Halperin, and Patrick Lee.

After 14 productive years at Bell Labs, he started pursuing the idea of leading his own research team. Through his Swiss wife Helen, he had been in touch with many of the Swiss physicists at Bell Labs, most of whom were ETH graduates. He appreciated the idea of a favorable environment at ETH with its stable funding and ample research opportunities. In 1982, Maurice Rice was appointed full professor in theoretical physics at ETH Zurich where he enjoyed mentoring students and young researchers until his retirement in 2004 and even beyond.

Throughout his career, Maurice Rice published numerous influential papers in condensed matter physics. Early in his career, he explored topics such as electron interactions in metals, the fate of superconductivity in low-dimensional systems, and excitonic insulators. His time at Bell Labs left an indelible mark on his scientific style, resulting in classic works that exemplified the synergy between experimentalists and theorists. Particularly notable among these were studies on electron-hole liquids in optically pumped semiconductors and the electronic properties of charge and spin density waves. His pioneering work with Bill Brinkman on the metal-insulator transition advanced the understanding of charge localization due to electron correlations, a concept that remains highly relevant today.

After moving to Switzerland, Maurice Rice helped transform ETH Zurich into a leading center for research on heavy fermion systems and unconventional superconductivity, collaborating closely with experimentalist Hans-Ruedi Ott. His seminal work with Kazuo Ueda on the microscopic understanding of heavy fermions and the symmetry properties of their superconducting states became foundational knowledge. Their proposal to examine power-laws in the low-temperature limit as indicators of nodal gaps has turned into a standard practice for characterizing new superconducting materials.

With the discovery of the cuprate high-temperature superconductors by Georg Bednorz and Karl Alex Müller at IBM Rüschlikon—just a few kilometers from ETH Zurich— Maurice’s research took a new direction that would shape his work for decades to come. This emerging field allowed him to fully leverage his extensive research experience and had a profound impact on its further development. His most renowned contribution, carried out in collaboration with Fuchun Zhang, was the identification of the crucial role played by the “Zhang-Rice singlet” in hole-doped copper oxides. This key concept provided a solid microscopic foundation for the t-J model introduced by Phil Anderson in support of his resonating valence bond (RVB) theory. Building on this idea, Maurice, along with Claudius Gros and Bob Joynt, observed that Cooper pairs with d-wave symmetry provided the energetically most favorable state—a crucial early insight into the pairing symmetry later confirmed by experiments, in parts inspired by several of Maurice’s previous proposals, such as the phase sensitive tests for the superconducting order parameter.

While Maurice was active on many fronts in condensed matter physics, the research closest to his heart centered on how Anderson’s RVB concept could unlock the mysteries of the exotic normal state in doped cuprates, particularly, the enigmatic pseudogap phase. His scientific journey led to the study of ladder-shaped systems and the effects of strong Umklapp scattering, which he examined through functional renormalization group methods together with Carsten Honerkamp and Manfred Salmhofer. This work culminated in the development of the Yang-Rice-Zhang (YRZ) theory, a powerful phenomenological approach that offers a remarkably consistent description of the pseudogap phase’s main features.

Maurice left an immense and lasting legacy in the field of condensed matter physics in Switzerland. Through his passionate teaching and enthusiastic approach to research, he established a new school of modern theoretical condensed matter physics, deeply influenced by his experience at Bell Labs, where close collaboration between theorists and experimentalists was key.  His numerous students — including undergraduates, doctoral candidates, and postdocs at ETH Zurich — have continued to carry forward his pioneering spirit and dedication to research and education.

Throughout his career at ETH, he has been a dedicated and influential figure in the Swiss physics community. Notably, he was among the founding members of the NCCR MaNEP (Materials with Novel Electronic Properties, 2001–2013) under the leadership of Øystein Fischer from the University of Geneva. This initiative profoundly shaped the field of materials-oriented condensed matter physics in Switzerland. In collaboration with Øystein, he co-chaired the first international conference on high-temperature superconductivity in 1988, marking the beginning of the M2S (Materials and Mechanisms of Superconductivity) conference series, which has since become a prestigious tri-annual event.

Maurice’s outstanding research achievements have been recognized with several prestigious awards, including the Hewlett-Packard Europhysics Prize and the John Bardeen Prize. His contributions earned him the election as an honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy, as member of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, and as Fellow of the Royal Society. The University of Ireland in Dublin conferred upon him an honorary doctorate, Doctor honoris causa, in recognition of his significant impact on the field and he was elected to honorary member of the Swiss Physical Society.

Maurice was an extraordinary mentor and colleague, whose personality, wealth of experience, and boundless enthusiasm inspired everyone who had the privilege of working with him. He will be profoundly missed by all who knew and collaborated with him.

Manfred Sigrist, Gianni Blatter and Bertram Batlogg

This tribute is also published on the website of the Swiss Physical Society.

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