Professor Steven Chu

Steven Chu earned his A.B. in mathematics, a B.S. in physics from the University of Rochester, and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Berkeley, where he was a postdoctoral fellow for two years. He joined Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, in 1978 and became the head of the quantum electronics research department at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Holmdel in 1983. In 1987, he became Theodore and Frances Geballe Professor in the Physics and Applied Physics Departments at Stanford University.

Professor Chu is best known for his work on cooling and trapping of atoms with laser light. He used an array of intersecting laser beams to create an effect in which the speed of target atoms was reduced from about 4,000 kilometers per hour to about one kilometer per hour, as if the atoms were moving through thick molasses. The temperature of the slowed atoms closely approached the lowest temperature theoretically attainable (just one thousandth of a degree Celsius above the absolute zero). These techniques eventually made it possible for scientists to improve the accuracy of atomic clocks used in space navigation, to construct atomic interferometers that can precisely measure gravitational forces, and to design atomic lasers that can be used to manipulate electronic circuits at an extremely fine scale.

Professor Chu’s groundbreaking achievements earned him numerous other prestigious prizes and several honorary degrees. He is also a Member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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