You'd think cracking a 20-year-old physics mystery would require equal parts ego and genius. But physicist Ali Yazdani, who recently overturned the accepted thinking on high-temperature superconductors, swears he's not all that smart. He's just a tool-builder.rnYazdani started his professional life as a 14-year-old learning to repair television sets in pre-revolution Iran, but after he emigrated to the U.S., a class in quantum mechanics pulled him into science. Today, the desk-size scanning tunneling microscopes that he builds can cool a sample to just above absolute zero, seal it in a near-perfect vacuum, and block the faintest noises-seismic rumblings, cars driving past outside, even cellphone signals. As a result, he can continuously track single atoms for months at a time.
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