Allan H. MacDonald

Allan H. MacDonald is a theoretical condensed matter physicist and the Sid W. Richardson Foundation Regents Chair Professor of Physics at The University of Texas at Austin. He completed a B.S. in physics at St. Francis Xavier University in 1973 and his Ph.D. at The University of Toronto in 1978. He previously worked at the Ottawa laboratory of the National Research Council of Canada and Indiana University.[1]

MacDonald's area of interest is on how electron-electron interactions affect electronic properties in condensed matter systems. He previously worked on density functional theory and the Quantum Hall effect, and most recently has focused on the Spin Hall effect, magnetic insulators, magnetic semiconductors and spin-orbit interactions.[2] In a 2011 paper he identified the possibility that the tunneling energy required for electrons to move between two graphene layers should shrink as the angle between the sheets approaches 1.1 degrees from each other, a prediction that was subsequently proven to be true and has inspired investigations into twistronics.[3][4] At this angle, bilayer graphene exhibits the property of superconductivity, which could lead to more efficient electric power transmission, levitating trains, cheaper medical imaging (MRI), and more powerful quantum computers.

MacDonald's work has been cited more than 53,743 times, and he has a h-index of 113.[5]

He received the Canadian Association of Physicists's Herzberg Medal in 1987,[6] is a Fellow of the American Physical Society,[7] and was elected to the National Academy of the Sciences in 2012.[8] In 2020 he received the Wolf Prize in Physics.[9]

He describes his own research as "driven, for the most part, by experiment rather than by theoretical technique".[10]