Philip Anderson was born in 1923 in Indianapolis, Indiana. In 1949, he received his Ph.D. from Harvard University, where he studied under J.H. Van Yleck. He joined the technical staff of Bell Laboratories that same year. From 1967 to 1975 he held a part-time professor-ship at Cambridge University. He is currently Joseph Henry Professor of Physics emeritus at Princeton University. He has received numerous distinctions and honors, including the O.E. Buckley Prize, the John Bardeen Prize, the Dannie Heineman Prize, the National Medal of Science, and the 1977 Nobel Prize.