The Josephson Effect as a Probe of Macroscopic Quantum Phenomena

The aim of this lecture is to give a short survey of the Josephson effect, confining the attention to main recent achievements and some stimulating perspectives.To render the lecture self contained a brief introduction will be given to remind of much aspects of the subject.Although it is always quite difficult to make any claim of novelty for a field which is under the limelight of the scientific community since almost 40 years, the Josephson effect remains a very fashionable subject for both the underlying physics and device applications. Attention will be also payed to its unique role in the investigations of physical phenomena whose interest goes beyond the specific issue of superconductivity. Examples of the Josephson effect as a powerful tool for the investigation of quantum mechanics at a macroscopic level wil be discussed.