Ashvin Vishwanath, a condensed-matter physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, received a Guggenheim fellowship in April for his exceptional scholarship. It will allow him to spend several months trying to fabricate the exotic states of matter that result from interactions between quantum particles. He describes how reaching out to colleagues in other fields transformed his career.

Why choose a career in physics?

Growing up in India, I realized that it was not common to pursue a pure-science career. I did my master's at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, where 90% of students were engineers. My choice of condensed-matter physics was also unusual — my peers were more attracted to particle physics or string theory. I wanted to be able to conduct experiments to test my theories.

How did you approach your PhD?

I did my PhD at Princeton University in New Jersey on high-temperature superconductors — specifically, how their structure differs from that of regular superconductors. The electrons look like a pair of dumb-bells rather than a pair of circles as in other types of superconductors. My thesis explored the consequences that arise from this pattern. No single one of my PhD papers was spectacularly received, but my colleagues noticed that I was doing a lot of work independently — framing problems and finding solutions on my own as well as working with my adviser and other postdocs. I got a number of postdoc offers.

How did you choose which postdoc to accept?

I made my decision on the basis of potential collaborators, because I felt I would do better science working with someone that I could discuss and generate ideas with. During my PhD, I noticed a paper by Senthil Todadri, a condensed-matter physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge. I e-mailed him with some questions, and we launched a collaboration on superconductivity. We got to know each other scientifically and, ultimately, I accepted a postdoc at MIT so that we could continue our work — I had the right instinct for what was important for a longer-term perspective.

What did you work on?

We studied the properties of phase transitions and showed that a seemingly implausible phase transition in superconductors became plausible at the quantum level. The e-mail that led to this collaboration and to this breakthrough finding was therefore a turning point for me.

Did you jump at the opportunity to apply for tenure-track jobs?

No. A few universities encouraged me to do so, but I wanted to spend as long as I could as a postdoc — I didn't think I had a discovery that was significant enough to give me the momentum necessary to start a successful lab. Eventually I landed a job at the University of California, Berkeley, which let me delay my start by a year to get more time as a postdoc. It was during that year that Senthil and I, along with other collaborators, discovered a new phase transition in a magnet, which is a relevant starting point for work in high-temperature superconductors. Had I rushed into a faculty position, I would have missed one of the most productive times of my career. When I'm making career decisions, focusing on the science has always worked best for me. Ten years on, I keep returning to the research questions I asked during my postdoc.

What will you do with the fellowship?

My group proposes the existence of states of matter that have properties that currently exist only in theory. These states obey the laws of nature, but I want to see if we can realize them in a material or synthetic system made of atomic gases. For example, I want to find a system that is a three-dimensional analogue of graphene.

Could this fellowship be a turning point?

Yes. If we can eventually make these materials, it would be huge. That's the dream of every theoretical physicist — to one day bring together a beautiful theory and the experiments to prove it.