Page "Condensed matter physics" Paragraph 3

A variety of topics in Physics such as crystallography, metallurgy, elasticity, magnetism, etc., were treated as distinct areas, until the 1940s when they were grouped together as Solid state physics.

Around the 1960s, the study of physical properties of liquids were added to this list, and it came to be known as condensed matter physics.

According to physicist Phil Anderson, the term was coined by himself and Volker Heine when they changed the name of their group at the Cavendish Laboratories, Cambridge from " Solid state theory " to " Theory of Condensed Matter ", as they felt it did not exclude their interests in the study of liquids, nuclear matter and so on.

The Bell Labs ( then known as the Bell Telephone Laboratories ) was one of the first institutes to conduct a research program in condensed matter physics.