John Bardeen “Ever Expanding Frontiers” cover

John Bardeen was an American physicist and electrical engineer, and the only two-time recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics: first for co-inventing the transistor while at Bell Labs, and the second time for co-developing the standard theory of superconductivity.

The transistor, of course, made possible the miniaturization and advancement of electronics that we take for granted today (including the existence of the device on which you are currently reading these words), and his work on superconductivity (the so-called "BCS theory") is now used in magnetic resonance imagery (MRI), which provides detailed, noninvasive diagnosis of injury and illness for millions of people around the world.

This cover by Joshua McGee — cancelled in Urbana, Illinois, where Bardeen developed superconductivity theory — features the image of a circuit board, overlaid with an expression of the energy gap predicted by BCS theory as a superconducting material approaches its critical temperature, and a quote from Bardeen: "Science is a field which grows continuously with ever expanding frontiers." Yes it does, Dr. Bardeen. And we thank you for that.