Neil S. Sullivan

Neil S. Sullivan is Professor of Physics at the University of Florida in Gainesville. He holds undergraduate degrees from Otago University in New Zealand and received his PhD at Harvard University in 1972, working on NMR studies at low temperatures with Robert Pound. He and his students in Paris discovered the quadrupolar glass phase of solid hydrogen and have studied the dynamics of vacancies and impurities in quantum solids, both helium and hydrogen. A Fellow of the American Physical Society, and member of the Societe Francaise de Physique, he was awarded the Prix Saintour by the College of France in 1978, and the La Caze Physics Prize by the Academie des Sciences (Paris) in 1983. He was one of the founding Principal Investigators for the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (1990) and was a member of the Board of Governors of the Joint Oceanographic Institutions in 1999. He chaired the Physics Department at UF from 1989 to 1999, and under his watch the new physics building was planned and completed. He also served as Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences from 2000 to 2006, during which time he oversaw the creation of the Graham Center for Public Service, the Center for European Studies, the Center for the Humanities, new degrees in Biology, Women’s Studies and Gender Research, five new languages, and a partnership with Spain for the assembly and operation of the 10-meter telescope on the Canary Islands.

He has authored more than 280 referred publications in his field, and was one of the founders of UF’s Microkelvin Laboratory (with Dwight Adams and Gary Ihas). He is currently one of  the Editors-in-Chief of the Journal of Low Temperature Physics (Springer Publishing Co.).