John Robert Schrieffer (born 31.05.1931) - an American physicist, a member of the National Academy of Sciences (1971). Born in Oak Park. Graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1953) and the University of Illinois (1957). In 1957 — 58 he completed his training at the University of Birmingham (England) and the Niels Bohr Institute (Denmark). In 1957—60 he worked at the University of Chicago, and in 1959 - 62 at the University of Illinois. Since 1962 he has been professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
His work concerned solid-state physics, low-temperature physics, superconductivity, magnetism and many-body theory. In 1957, together with J. Bardeen and L. Cooper, he developed the microscopic theory of superconductivity (Nobel Prize, 1972). Calculated (1962) the lifetime of quasiparticles in a superconductor and analysed how the width of the energy gap depends on the phonon spectrum.