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Federico Capasso obtained his Ph.D. in Physics, summa cum laude, from the University of Rome, and an Honorary Doctorate in Electronic Engineering from the University of Bologna in 2003. He worked for 26 years at Bell Laboratories before moving to Harvard University, where he is currently the Robert L. Wallace Professor of Applied Physics and Vinton Hayes Senior Research Fellow in Electrical Engineering at Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Professor Capasso is an exceptionally creative scientist operating at the interface between applied and basic science and electronic engineering. He made seminal contributions to the physics and technology of semiconductor nanostructures, with profound impact on quantum electronics, photonics, solid-state science and technology. The quantum cascade laser (QCL), which he invented while working at Bell Laboratories, represents the greatest of his many remarkable contributions.

Professor Capasso is internationally known for his pioneering research in band-structure or bandgap engineering, which allows devices to be tailored to specific applications, thus opening up research directions and commercial possibilities in photonics, electronics and nanotechnology. His invention of quantum cascade laser (QCLs), a fundamentally new light source, has revolutionized infrared science and technology by giving access to the mid-infrared spectrum and has found wide-ranging applications in various scientific and industrial fields including chemical sensing, medical diagnostics, spectroscopy and trace gas analysis. Capasso’s many other contributions include multilayer low-noise avalanche photodiodes, the solid-state photomultiplier and seminal earlier work with quantum electron devices that revived interest in multilevel logic and coding.

He has authored and co-authored over 300 scientific articles and has received numerous awards and honors for his research and achievements. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the UK Institute of Physics, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the International Society for Optical Engineering, and the American Physical Society. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering, and Honorary Member of the Franklin Institute.

This biography was written in the year the prize was awarded.

Anton Zeilingerreceived his Ph.D. in physics and mathematics from the University of Vienna in 1971. He is currently a professor of Experimental Physics at the University of Vienna, and a Scientific Director of the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

Professor Zeilinger is one of the world’s leading quantum physicists. He works both on theoretical and experimental foundations of quantum physics, and a primary focus of his research is entanglement, the deep connectedness of distant systems. He started the field of multi-particle entanglement, which became a crucial ingredient for any future quantum computer. He carried out the first entanglement-based quantum communication, the first quantum teleportation, the first experimental quantum teleportation, and the first quantum cryptography with entangled photons. These groundbreaking achievements contributed significantly to a new understanding of fundamental issues in the interpretation of quantum mechanics, where information is the central theme. Another focus of his work has been to investigate quantum features of large particles and the transition between quantum mechanics and classical physics. Zellinger made the first experimental demonstration of quantum interference of Buckminster-Fullerenes and biologically relevant macromolecules. He is currently studying the quantum behavior of real mechanical systems, such as mechanical oscillators (micro-mirrors).

Professor Zeilinger published more than 335 scientific articles and 11 books, and presented more than 500 invited lectures worldwide. He was awarded numerous honors, including the German Order of Merit, the Senior Humboldt Award, the Klopsteg Memorial Award and the Lorenz-Oken Medal of the German Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2005, he was listed by the “New Statesman” newspaper among the “10 people who could change the world.” He is a fellow or honorary fellow of many prestigious scientific academies and societies, and recipient of two honorary doctorates. He took professorships and visiting positions at many prestigious institutions including the Technical University of Munich, the Technical University of Vienna, MIT (USA), Humboldt University (Berlin), Oxford University and the College de France in Paris. He is also an Honorary Professor at the University of Science and Technology of China. To share his excitement about quantum physics with a broader audience, Professor Zellinger published “Einsteins Schleier” (Einstein’s Veil) in 2003, which later became a German-language bestseller.

This biography was written in the year the prize was awarded.

Semir Zekiobtained his Ph.D. in anatomy from University College in London (UCL), followed by post-doctoral research in the United States. Over the next three decades, he pursued a distinguished career in neurobiology, and became a Professor of Neurobiology at UCL in 1981. Zeki is a Fellow of the prestigious Royal Society (London), foreign member of the American Philosophical Society, Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (London), and member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts and the Academia Europaea. He is also a member of the Scientific Board of Governors at the Scripps Research Institute.

Professor Zeki’s lifetime contributions are centered on the organization of the visual cortex in humans and other primates. One of his earlier keynote findings was the discovery that specific areas of the visual cortex engage in segregated responses to either color vision or visual motion stimulation, and that color and visual motion are perceived at different times. He described how colors are represented in the visual cortex and how that region uses color-coded cells to process color images. From the wealth of information that he gathered over several years on vision and motion pathways, Zeki formulated an overall theory of visual consciousness in which he proposed that the visual brain contains several, parallel and functionally specialized processing areas. Subsequently, he developed a novel psychophysical technique which showed that the cortical regions processing a visual stimulus are also involved in its perception. This cutting-edge discovery provided the basis for his revolutionary concept that consciousness is not a unity, but an assembly of numerous micro consciousnesses distributed both in time and space. He is studying how these visual micro consciousnesses are integrated to produce a unified perception of the visual scene.

Professor Zeki’s seminal contributions to the biology of vision were recognized by numerous other prizes, invited lectureships, and membership of learned societies and editorial boards. He authored or co-authored some 180 papers and four books. His main interest outside his work lies on learning more about art and creativity as manifestations of brain activity and this has led him to engage with artists and write about their work; for instance, his books Inner Vision, which has been translated into 6 languages, and La Quête de l’essentiel – jointly with the late French painter Balthus – as well as articles about Dante, Michelangelo and Wagner). This has also led him to establish the Institute of Neuroaesthetics in Berkeley, CA in 2001.

This biography was written in the year the prize was awarded.

Koji Nakanishi received his bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from Nagoya University, followed by post-graduate studies at Harvard University (U.S.A.), then obtained his Ph.D. in chemistry from Nagoya University in 1954. He taught in three of the leading universities in Japan, namely, Nagoya, Kyaiku, and Tahoka. In 1969, he joined Columbia University’s (CU) Department of Chemistry, where he was appointed as a Centennial Professor of Chemistry in 1980. He was also a Chairman of the Chemistry Department at CU, a founding member and a Director of Research at the International Center of Insect Physiology and Ecology in Kenya, and the first Director of the Suntry Institute for Bioorganic Research in Osaka, Japan. He played a significant role in establishing the Brazilian government’s Institute of Medicinal and Ecological Chemistry, a center of excellence in the Amazons with headquarters in Sao Paulo. He also initiated a chemistry unit within Biosphere 2, Arizona, operated by CU.

Professor Nakanishi was a leading figure in the isolation and structure determination of biologically active natural products. He designed versatile techniques to study these products beyond the limits imposed by the miniscule quantity of material; this enabled him to determine the structure of more than 350 compounds and to elucidate the structural basis for the activity of some carcinogens, neurotoxins, anti-cancer agents, and other bioactive compounds that affect human, animal, and plant life. His long-term studies on the interaction of light with rhodopsin, the pigment molecule responsible for vision, are close to solving the mystery of macular degeneration, a condition that can cause blindness and for which no treatment is presently known.

Professor Nakanishi published more than 700 papers and authored, co-authored, and edited 9 books on spectroscopy and natural products, including the 8-volume text: Comprehensive Natural Products Chemistry (jointly with D.H.R. Barton) and his 1991 autobiography: A Wandering Natural Products Chemist, published by the American Chemical Society. The 425 former students of Nakanishi’s and members of his research group (95 in Japan and 330 at CU) are now occupying leading positions around the world.

Professor Nakanishi was the most decorated chemist in the world; he received numerous prestigious awards and honors by over a dozen different nations and by numerous scientific organizations. The Emperor of Japan awarded him the title of “Person of Cultural Merit,” which is considered one of the highest awards in Japan. A major prize was named for him; the Nakanishi Prize of the American Chemical Society and the Chemical Society of Japan. He was also awarded honorary doctorates from Williams College, Georgetown University and the University of Uppsala. In 1999, a group of his former students and post-doctoral fellows published The Biology – Chemistry Interface: A Tribute to Koji Nakanishi. Apart from being an exceptionally talented chemist, Nakanishi was also a talented magician.

This biography was written in the year the prize was awarded.

Frederick Hawthorne received his B.A. in chemistry from Pomona College in Claremont, CA in 1949, and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) 1953, followed by post-doctoral research in physical-organic chemistry at Iowa State University, Ames. In 1954, he joined the Redstone Arsenal Research Division of the Rohm and Haas Company in Huntsville, Alabama, as a senior research chemist. In 1960, he became a visiting lecturer in Physical-Organic Chemistry at Harvard University, and later returned to Rohm and Haas to become a Director of the company’s laboratories in Philadelphia. He became a full professor of chemistry at the University of California, Riverside in 1962. He returned to UCLA in 1969 as Professor of Inorganic Chemistry, and was later named the University Professor of Chemistry.

Professor Hawthorne was the principal originator of the field of polyhedral borane chemistry. He conceived and carried out the fusion of transition metals with carborane clusters. This led to the discovery of the huge fields of metallacarborane and metalloborane chemistry. He also sought and found homogeneous metallacarborane catalysts and new organometallic reactions characteristic of borane clusters, and produced boron-labeled biomolecules as target compounds in the boron neutron capture therapy of cancer. Most recently, carboranes and polyhedral boranes are being developed as molecular manifolds for drug delivery, as pharmacophores groups in drug design and as components of molecular electronic devices and nanomachines.

Professor Hawthorne was the author or co-author of around 550 research papers, 30 patents and 10 book chapters. He trained 211 Ph.D. students and postdoctoral associates from 21 different countries. Hawthorne’s distinguished research career has been heralded by a long list of other national and international awards and honors, including numerous prizes, medals, honorary degrees, awards, lectureships, fellowships of national and international scientific academies, and membership of learned societies and editorial boards. Professor Hawthorne served for more than 30 years as editor of Inorganic Chemistry. He was also a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Bioconjugate Chemistry.

This biography was written in the year the prize was awarded.

Peter Shor received his bachelor’s degree in mathematics from California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena in 1981, a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1985, followed by post-doctoral training at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1986, he joined AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, and moved, in 1996, to AT&T laboratories in Florham Park, New Jersey.

Professor Shor is most famous for his work on quantum computation, particularly for devising a quantum algorithm, now known as Shor’s Algorithm, for factoring faster than the fastest known algorithm running on a digital computer. Shor’s algorithm uses a number of steps that grow only polynomially in the size of the instance, for example, the number of digits in the number to be factored. He thus made the physical development of quantum computers (hypothetical machines of which only small prototypes have so far been built) more feasible by showing that errors in the computation need not inevitably disrupt the operations of a quantum computer – he exhibited quantum correcting codes, which could be used to build a quantum computer out of slightly noisy components.

Professor Shor was awarded the Rolf Nevanlinna Prize from the International Congress of Mathematicians, the Dickson Prize in Science, the International Quantum Communication Award and the Gödel Prize for best paper in theoretical computer science. In 1999, he was awarded the MacArthur fellowship (nicknamed “Genius Fellowship”), which is awarded annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to US citizens and residents of any age and field of research “who show exceptional merit and promise for continued and enhanced creative work.”

This biography was written in the year the prize was awarded.

Yuri Manin received his M.Sc. in mathematics from Moscow University and a Ph.D. and Habilitation from the Steklov Mathematical Institute of the Academy of Sciences in Moscow. He served as a professor of Mathematics at Moscow University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and as a Visiting Professor at Columbia University. In 1993, he was appointed Director of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn.

Professor Manin is one of the most influential mathematicians, with broad research interests covering algebra, geometry, number theory, theoretical computer science and mathematical physics. He published his first paper during his undergraduate years. His earlier achievements also include proof of the Model conjecture, introduction of the Gauss-Manin Connection, a vital tool in modern algebraic geometry, and disproof of the Luroth problem (jointly with Iskoviskih). In the theory of number, he discovered certain constraints known as Brauer-Manin Obstruction to the existence of rational solutions to Diophantine equations. He also launched a program to study algebraic manifolds and carried out – with his students – widely recognized work on error-correcting codes algorithms. From the late 1970s, he turned his attention to the application of algebraic geometry to mathematical physics, and made significant advances in quantum field theory and quantum string theory. More recently, he contributed to the development of a mathematical theory of quantum homology. He authored 14 books and more than 200 scientific papers in prestigious journals, and mentored numerous students from around the world. Professor Manin’s intellectual pursuit extends beyond mathematics; he published research and expository papers in literature, mythology, semiotics, physics, linguistics, glotto-genesis, history of culture, and philosophy of science.

Professor Manin’s outstanding contributions to both mathematics and physics were recognized by numerous prestigious prizes, medals, honorary doctorate degrees, fellowships of major scientific academies and Institutes, honorary lectureships and editorships of major mathematical journals.

This biography was written in the year the prize was awarded.

Chen Nin Yang obtained his B.Sc. at the National Southwest Associated University in Kunming, and an M.Sc. in Physics at Tsinghua University, China, and a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, where he also served as instructor in 1948. The following year, Yang joined the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton University in New Jersey, becoming a full professor six years later. In 1965, he took the position of Albert Einstein Professor and Director of the newly founded Institute of Theoretical Physics at the State University of New York in Stoneybrook (SUNY). Following his retirement in 1999, he was appointed an Albert Einstein Professor Emeritus and an Honorary Director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics at SUNY, and a Distinguished Professor At-Large at the Chinese University in Hong Kong. He is currently an honorary director of Tsinghua University, Beijing, where he is the Huang Jibei-Lu Kaiqun professor at the Center for Advanced Studies.

Professor Yang is a renowned theoretical physicist whose research with Tsung-Dao Lee showed that the law of parity symmetry between physical phenomena occurring in right-handed and left-handed coordinate systems is violated during the decay of certain elementary particles. Prior to that, it was assumed that parity symmetry was a universal law in physics. This and other studies in particle physics earned Yang and Lee the Nobel Prize in 1957. Yang’s subsequent work with Robert Mills on the non-Abelian gauge theory (also known as Quantum Yang-Mills theory) laid the foundation for the unification of all interactions in nature. It is this latter work that was recognized by the King Faisal International Prize for Science. Yang also made fundamental contributions to statistical mechanics and the theory of quantum fluids.

Professor Yang’s profoundly deep contributions to the principles of theoretical physics were recognized by numerous other prestigious awards and honors, 18 honorary degrees, and honorary fellowships of leading international scientific academies and societies worldwide. In 1986, he received the National Science Medal, the highest American distinction in science, from the President of the USA. He was also elected Fellow of the prestigious Royal Society in London.

This biography was written in the year the prize was awarded.

Sajeev John obtained his B.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Ph.D. in Physics from Harvard University. He then received post-doctoral training at the University of Pennsylvania. During his stay in the United States, he served at Exxon Research and Engineering Laboratories, Princeton University and Bell Communications Research Laboratories. In 1989, he joined the University of Toronto, where he became a Professor of Physics in 1992 and a Principal Investigator for Photonics Research Ontario.

Professor John’s main research involves three areas: light localization and photonic bands, high temperature superconductivity, and multiple light scattering spectroscopy. He played a major role in the discovery and elucidation of the fundamental principles of photonic band gap materials and was the driving force behind research which involves the processing of information by optical means. Photonic gap materials are dielectric materials capable of trapping light, thus providing photonic analogs of semiconductors. This new technology could lead to the development of optical microchips where light instead of electricity moves through tiny circuits. If this technology can be mass produced, it will be a major technological advance since information will be processed at the speed of light, allowing smaller and faster communication devices to be built. John’s other research interests include medical imaging and high-temperature superconductivity. He is also developing a microscopic theory of the superconducting phase of high temperature cuprate superconductors. If successful, it could lead to the fabrication of superconducting materials that operate at room temperature.

Professor John received several awards and honors including the Herzberg Medal for Physics, Steacie Prize, and the Humboldt Senior Scientist Award. He is also the recipient of the McLean Fellowship from the University of Toronto, the Killman Research Fellowship from the Canada Council, the Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Fellowship from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.

This biography was written in the year the prize was awarded.