American physicist and corecipient, with John H. Van Vleck (Van Vleck, John H.) and Sir Nevill F. Mott (Mott, Sir Nevill F.), of the 1977 Nobel Prize for Physics for his research on semiconductors, superconductivity, and magnetism.

Educated at Harvard University, Anderson received his doctorate in 1949. From 1949 to 1984 he worked at Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. From 1967 to 1975 he was professor of theoretical physics at the University of Cambridge, and from 1975 he taught at Princeton University. His research in solid-state physics made possible the development of inexpensive electronic switching and memory devices in computers. In 1982 he was awarded the National Medal of Science.

His writings include Concepts of Solids (1963) and Basic Notions of Condensed Matter Physics (1984). Anderson was a certified first degree–master of the Japanese board game go.