It had already led to the discovery of Type II superconductivity and the vortex state by Abrikosov. At Orsay it led to the discovery of the surface upper critical field Hc3 and gave us an intuitive understanding of the proximity effect between superconductors and normal metals, works that made the Orsay Group on Superconductivity so well known. Indeed by introducing a new length scale in the phenomenology of the superconducting state, the coherence length, the Ginzburg-Landau paper had made a ground breaking step forward. The decisive role played by Vitaly Ginzburg in the development of this theory was finally recognized when he received the Nobel Prize, together with Abrikosov and Legget.

Vitaly Ginzburg in 2003, the year he jointly won the Nobel physics prize. (Photograph: Tatyana Makeyeva/AFP/Getty Images)

The other major contribution of Vitaly Ginzburg to the science of superconductivity, which has been to a large extent forgotten but may now enjoy a sensational come back, was to promote the idea that high temperature superconductivity was possible through mechanisms different from the electron-phonon interaction. One must remember that at that time, in the late sixties, most of the leading theorists professed that a temperature of about 30 degrees Kelvin was the highest one could hope for. Vitaly Ginzburg, ever an optimist, had the idea that excitons could mediate an electron-electron interaction with the advantage of a much larger energy scale, compared to phonons, and therefore could lead to much higher critical temperatures. It is interesting that, after having been forgotten, this idea has been “rediscovered” by theorists working on graphene. They have predicted that in this material the excitonic mechanism could lead to room temperature superconductivity. Sadly, Vitaly is not with us anymore to participate in this new venture.

I am sure that de Gennes would have loved to have Vitaly Ginzburg as a visitor at Orsay, as his seminal paper with Landau was already a legend as his new ideas on an excitonic mechanism were of great interest to us. But in the sixties he was not amongst those allowed by the Soviets to travel abroad. I saw him briefly in 1966 at the Low Temperature LT10 meeting in Moscow–but I was a very junior physicist and did not really get a chance to talk to him. We later met in Israel at the 1993 High Tc meeting in Eilat where Yosi Yehsurun  and I, as co-chairmen, had invited him to give a key note speech, as travel was now possible for him. He gave a truly fantastic talk, where he thrilled the audience with his stamina, humor and deep understanding of physics. Earlier in 1991, there was a memorable reunion at the home of Julien Bok in Paris. He had invited Vitaly and Nina Ginzburg together with Pierre Gilles and Annie de Gennes. Pierre Gilles was in a high mood, this was just before his Nobel Prize was announced. Vitaly had given one of his brilliant talks, pointing out that the main question about the superconducting cuprates discovered by Bednorz and Mueller was whether there were or were not preformed electron pairs above the critical temperature. Once again, he was asking the right question before others did. His own hope for the Prize was finally to be realized later.

Vitaly and Nina were a great couple. One evening at our home in Herzlya Vitaly told us how he had saved Nina from life emprisonment. That same evening Nina and I realized that we had already met many years back – in fact she was the one who had registered me at LT10, as she was helping Vitaly with the organization of the meeting! There was a pervasive feeling of optimism – finally we could meet freely, the world looked better than it had for many years.

Vitaly was a warm Jew and a great friend of Israel. During one of his visits I asked him whether he would consider making alyah. He answered that he was not anymore young enough to make this move. He was a great, proud and at the same time a modest man.