Local moments and localized States.

What mathematical difficulty it contained has been almost fully- cleared up within the past few years. Localization was a different matter: very few believed it at the time, and even fewer saw its importance; among those who failed to fully understand it at first was certainly its author. It has yet to receive adequate mathematical treatment, and one has to resort to the indignity of numerical simulations to settle even the simplest questions about it. Only now, and through primarily Sir Nevill Mott’s efforts, is it beginning to gain general acceptance. Yet these two finally successful brainchildren have also much in common: first, they flew in the face of the overwhelming ascendancy. at the time of the band theory of solids, in emphasizing locality : how a magnetic moment, or an eigenstate, could be permanently pinned down in a given region. It is this fascination with the local and with the failures, not successes, of band theory, which the three of us here seem to have in common. Second, the two ideas were born in response to a clear experimental signal which contradicted the assumptions of the time; third, they intertwine my work with that of my two great colleagues with whom I have been jointly honored; and fourth, both subjects are still extremely active in 1977.