John Wilkins (1936-2019): condensed matter leader

I was sad to hear last week of the death of John Wilkins. He was a mentor to a whole generation of condensed matter physicists and a generous servant, both individuals and institutions. This obituary and memories from some colleagues gives a nice description of his many contributions.

I was privileged to do a postdoc with Wilkins at Ohio State University in the early 1990s. He had a significant influence on me, both scientifically and professionally. Much of the practical advice I write on this blog relating to jobs, writing, and giving talks, I learned from Wilkins. Even ten years after I worked with him I would still occasionally phone him for advice, particularly with negotiating and deciding on job offers.

Real leadership does not involve having a position, but rather having influence. Servant leaders are not concerned with advancing their own interests, but rather those of others in their community. They do this by investing in people and institutions. Wilkins did this in many ways. He invested heavily in his own graduate students and postdocs. He advised and mentored countless other students, postdocs, and young faculty, for whom he had no formal responsibility or anything to gain from their success. He was proud of the fact that he never held an administrative position in a university. Nevertheless, his influence was far greater than most department chairs and deans. He served the American Physical Society in countless ways, particularly their publishing activities and the Division of Condensed Matter Physics. He wrote innumerable reference letters, referee reports, and grant reviews.

Reflecting on Wilkins, I was reminded of these recent words of David Brooks, written in a different context.

I had a feeling of going back in time. Why did it feel so strange? It was because I was looking at people who are not self-centered. They’ve dedicated themselves to the organization that formed them, and which they serve.

A few other basic but important things I learned from Wilkins:
Write clearly. Rewrite. Talk to people. Theory should relate to real materials and real experiments. Defining the problem clearly can be an important contribution. A concrete calculation on a concrete model is valuable.

Wilkins did have significant scientific achievements, but they tend to get dwarfed in comparison to his influence over people. Perhaps, the most significant relate to the Kondo problem. This began with his student Krishnamurthy, who used Wilson's numerical renormalisation group to understand all the different regimes of the Anderson single impurity model. Later with his students Dan Cox and Gene Bickers, Wilkins applied slave boson techniques to describe a wide range of experimental properties of valence fluctuation associated with magnetic impurities in metals.

In classic Wilkins style, he convened a group of distinguished theorists to meet in Los Alamos one summer to write a definitive early review article on heavy fermions.

Wilkins was larger than life. He laughed a lot and was a tease. He could also be intimidating. Before his groups' annual pilgrimage to the APS March meeting, everyone had to give a practice talk to the group and Wilkins. A fellow postdoc confided to me that each year he was more nervous about giving the practice talk than the real talk! One time, Wilkins got frustrated that too many of us had small fonts on our overhead transparencies. He made us all chant together: ``22 point type is the smallest! 22 point type is the smallest! ...."  again and again until we got the point.

It was well known that Wilkins did not like his picture taken. On his department web page he put a picture of another John Wilkins, one of the founders of the Royal Society. However, my wife did not know his aversion. In 1992? Kevin Ingersent hosted a group Thanksgiving dinner at his house. Later to my shock, I discovered my wife took the photo below. ``What?! You took a photo of Wilkins?!"

Wilkins was a great role model as a scientist, a faculty member, and a servant of a professional community.