Douglas D. Osheroff was born in Aberdeen, Washington, on August 1, 1945, the son of William Osheroff and Bessie Anne (Ondov) Osheroff. He married Phyllis S. K. Liu in 1970. After obtaining a B.S. at the California Institute of Technology in 1967, he came to Cornell University, where he collaborated in low-temperature physics research with his doctoral mentors. In 1973, Osheroff completed his doctorate. He remained at Cornell, while concurrently working at Bell Laboratories, where he stayed until 1982. At Cornell, he headed the Solid State and Low Temperature Department from 1982 to 1987. Osheroff left Cornell in 1987 to accept a full professorship at Stanford University. Chair of Stanford's Physics Department from 1993 to 1996, he was named J. G. Jackson and C. J. Wood Professor of Physics in 1992.

Osheroff was a doctoral student of David M. Lee and Robert C. Richardson when the trio started the research that would eventually lead to discovery of helium-3 in...