| | 1 | Name: | Dr. Nicolaas Bloembergen | | | Institution: | Harvard University | | | Year Elected: | 1982 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1920 | | | Death Date: | September 5, 2017 | | | | | | |
Nicolaas Bloembergen was born in Dordrecht, the Netherlands, in 1920. He obtained his Phil. Cand. and Phil. Drs. Degrees in physics at the University of Utrecht. In 1946 he came to the United States and worked with Professor E.M. Purcell at Harvard on Nuclear Magnetic Relaxation. This was the title of his Ph.D. thesis, submitted at the University of Leiden in 1948, where he was a research fellow in the Kamerkingh Onnes Laboratory. He returned to Harvard University in 1949 as a Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows, became Associate Professor of Applied Physics in 1951, Gordon McKay Professor in 1957, Rumford Professor of Physics in 1974, and Gerhard Gade University Professor in 1981. Since 1990 he has been professor emeritus. He then held an honorary professorship in the Optical Sciences Center at the University of Arizona. His research was concerned with nuclear and electron paramagnetic resonance, microwave masers and nonlinear optics. He had supervised fifty-seven Ph.D. theses, and a similar number of post-doctoral fellows have worked in his laboratory. He was the author or co-author of over three hundred scientific papers published in professional journals and had written two monographs: Nuclear Magnetic Relaxation (republished 1961) and Nonlinear Optics (1965). He was a recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1981, the Lorentz Medal of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences in 1978, and the National Medal of Science in 1974. He also received the Medal of Honor of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, the Frederick Ives Medal of the Optical Society of America and the Stuart Ballantine Medal of the Franklin Institute. He was a member of various academies in the United States and abroad. In addition to his service on the faculty of the Arts and Sciences at Harvard University for four decades, he was a visiting professor in Paris, Leiden, Bangalore, Munich, Berkeley, and Pasadena. Furthermore, he had served on numerous advisory committees of U.S. government agencies and of industrial and academic institutions and on several editorial boards of scientific publications. In 1991 he was president of the American Physical Society. Nicolaas Bloembergen died September 5, 2017, in Tucson, Arizona, at the age of 97. | |
| 2 | Name: | Dr. Lewis M. Branscomb | | | Institution: | JFK School of Government, Harvard University | | | Year Elected: | 1970 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1926 | | | Death Date: | May 31, 2023 | | | | | | |
Lewis M. Branscomb is Professor Emeritus of Public Policy and Corporate Management, Emeritus Director of the Science, Technology and Public Policy Program and a member of the Board of Directors of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. At present, he is also Adjunct Professor at the University of California, San Diego's School of International Relations and Pacific Studies and Distinguished Research Fellow, Institute for Global Conflict and Cooperation, University of California. His AB in physics is from Duke University in 1945, summa cum laude, and his Ph.D. degree in physics from Harvard University in 1950, after which he was Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows. A research physicist at the U.S. National Bureau of Standards (now the National Institute of Standards and Technology) from 1951-69, he was Director of NBS from 1969-72. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Science, National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine. In 1972 Dr. Branscomb was named vice president and chief scientist of IBM and a member of the Corporate Management Board, serving until his retirement in 1986. He also served as chairman of the National Science Board from 1980-84. Dr. Branscomb is a former director of Mobil Corp. and General Foods Corp. and serves on the Board of Lord Corporation. He is an emeritus trustee of Vanderbilt University, member of the C.S. Draper Laboratory Corporation, and emeritus Trustee of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. He is a former Overseer of Harvard University. He has served five presidents in various advisory and executive positions. Dr. Branscomb's awards include the National Science Board's Vannevar Bush Award (2001); the Rockefeller Public Service Award (1957-58); the Gold Medal for Exceptional Service from the U.S. Department of Commerce (1961); the Arthur Bueche Prize of the National Academy of Engineering (1987); and the Okawa Prize in Communications and Informatics (1999). He pioneered the spectroscopy of atomic and molecular negative ions and studied their role in stellar atmospheres and chemical aeronomy. His current research is on early-stage high-tech innovation, innovation policy in China, business development in the field of information technology, the role of science and technology in countering terrorism, and a new policy paradigm for federal support of basic research. His recent books include (with Philip Auerswald, Todd LaPorte and Erwann Michel-Kerjan) Seeds of Disaster, Roots of Response (2006); (with Richard Klausner) Making the Nation Safer: S&T for Countering Terrorism (2002); (with Philip E. Auerswald) "Between Invention and Innovation: An Analysis of the Funding for Early Stage Technology Development" (2003); (with Philip Auerswald, Nicholas Demos and Brian K. Min) "Understanding Private-Sector Decision Making for Early-Stage Technology Development" (2003); (with Philip Auerswald) "Start-Ups and Spin-offs: Collective Entrepreneurship Between Invention and Innovation," in The Emergence of Entrepreneurship Policy: Governance, Start-Ups, and Growth in the Knowledge Economy (2003); (with Philip Auerswald) Taking Technical Risks: How Innovators, Managers and Investors Manage Risk in High Tech Innovation (2001); (with Fumio Kodama and Richard Florida) "Industrializing Knowledge: University-Industry Linkages in Japan and the United States (1999); and (with James Keller) Investing in Innovation: Creating a Research and Innovation Policy that Works (1998). | |
| 3 | Name: | Dr. Harvey Brooks | | | Institution: | Harvard University | | | Year Elected: | 1961 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1915 | | | Death Date: | May 28, 2004 | | | | |
| 4 | Name: | Dr. Bertrand I. Halperin | | | Institution: | Harvard University | | | Year Elected: | 1990 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1941 | | | | | | |
Bertrand Halperin is a theoretical physicist of great distinction who has made fundamental contributions to almost every facet of present-day condensed matter physics. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley and is currently Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Harvard University. Dr. Halperin's research interests include many aspects of the theory of condensed matter systems and statistical physics. A major portion of his current research involves the theory of electron states and transport in small particles of a metal or semiconductor. Much of this work has been motivated by experiments carried out in various laboratories at Harvard. Dr. Halperin is Scientific Director of the Harvard Center for Imaging and Mesoscale Systems, which encourages interdisciplinary research and education in this area. Another major portion of Dr. Halperin's work concerns properties of two-dimensional electron systems at low temperatures in strong magnetic fields, or "quantum Hall systems". Experiments on these systems, since 1980, have revealed a succession of very surprising phenomena, which have required the introduction of a number of new theoretical methods for their explanation. Dr. Halperin has been involved in the development of several of these methods. A number of very puzzling experimental results still exist in this field, particularly in experiments involving bi-layer systems, which remain a challenge to theoretical understanding. Dr. Halperin's other current interests include superconductivity, transport in inhomogeneous systems, and nuclear magnetic resonance experiments in porous media. Previous research interests have included quantum antiferromagnets in one and two dimensions, low-temperature properties of glasses, melting and other phase transitions in two-dimensional systems, and the theory of dynamic phenomena near a phase transition. Before joining the Harvard faculty in 1969, Dr. Halperin worked as a member of the technical staff at Bell Laboratories and served as an NSF postdoctoral fellow at the University of Paris. Dr. Halperin is the recipient of the American Physical Society's 1982 Oliver E. Buckley Prize and its 2019 Medal for Exceptional Achievement. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Bertrand Halperin was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1990. | |
| 5 | Name: | Dr. Lene Vestergaard Hau | | | Institution: | Harvard University | | | Year Elected: | 2023 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1959 | | | | | | |
Lene Vestergaard Hau is the Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and of Applied Physics and is the Area Chair for Applied Physics at Harvard University. Prior to joining the Harvard faculty in 1999, she was a senior scientist at the Rowland Institute for Science in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and holds a Ph.D. in Physics from University of Aarhus, Denmark. Hau led a team who succeeded in slowing a pulse of light to 15 miles per hour and also brought light to a stop. They took matters further as they stopped and extinguished a light pulse in one part of space, and subsequently revived it in a different location. In the process, the light pulse is converted to a perfect matter copy that can be stored, sculpted, and then turned back to light. These results represent the ultimate quantum control of light and matter. Hau’s team also utilized the great spatial compression of ultra-slow light pulses to generate quantum shock waves in Bose-Einstein condensates thereby opening up a new field for studies of the rich and dramatic nonlinear dynamics of these superfluid, cold atomic systems.
Hau has contributed to a wide variety of research fields. Her Ph.D. work was in theoretical condensed matter physics and she later shifted her attention to experimental and theoretical optical and atomic physics. Her research has included studies of ultra-cold atoms and superfluid Bose-Einstein condensates, as well as channeling of high-energy electrons, protons, and positrons in single crystals with experiments at CERN and Brookhaven National Laboratory. Her group has manipulated atomic matter waves with nanoscale structures, and performed protein studies at the single molecule level with biological nanopores.
She is a 2001 MacArthur Fellow, and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the American Physical Society. Hau is also the recipient of numerous awards, including Harvard University’s Ledlie Prize, the Ole Roemer Medal, awarded by the University of Copenhagen, and the Richtmyer Memorial Lecture Award awarded by the American Association of Physics Teachers. In 2010, she was named "World Dane," and in 2012 "Thomson Reuters (Clarivate) Citation Laureate in Physics." In 2018 she was honored with the Lise Meitner Distinguished Lecture and Medal, sponsored by The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences through its Nobel Committee for Physics, and in 2019 with the Lars Onsager Lecture and Medal by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and the Dirac Medal and Lecture by the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, and the Australian Institute of Physics.
Lene Hau’s research is described on RadioLab’s "Master of the Universe." | |
| 6 | Name: | Dr. Edward M. Purcell | | | Institution: | Harvard University | | | Year Elected: | 1954 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1912 | | | Death Date: | 3/7/97 | | | | |
| 7 | Name: | Dr. Norman F. Ramsey | | | Institution: | Harvard University | | | Year Elected: | 1958 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1915 | | | Death Date: | November 4, 2011 | | | | | | |
Norman F. Ramsey won the Nobel Prize in 1989 for his work on the hydrogen maser and the atomic clock, which underpins the Global Positioning System and many other important technologies. He did his Ph.D. work under I.I. Rabi at Columbia University, and during WWII he worked on the Manhattan Project and at the MIT Radiation Lab on the development of radar. Dr. Ramsey then returned to Columbia as a professor, working with Rabi and others on molecular beam research. Together with Rabi, he laid the groundwork for the establishment of Brookhaven National Laboratory, and in 1946 he became the first head of its physics department. A year later, he accepted a professorship at Harvard University and remained at Harvard, becoming Higgins Professor of Physics Emeritus in 1986 although he continued his work through the early 90s. Dr. Ramsey was recognized with numerous prestigious research awards as well as the Oersted Medal in recognition of his contributions to physics and math teaching. A former Science Advisor to NATO, he has been honored with membership in the American Physical Society and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Dr. Ramsey died on November 4, 2011, at the age of 96 in Wayland, Massachusetts. | |
| 8 | Name: | Dr. Lisa Randall | | | Institution: | Harvard University | | | Year Elected: | 2010 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1962 | | | | | | |
Lisa Randall's papers with Raman Sundrum on the brane-world with warped extra dimensions are two of the five most highly cited works in high energy theory in the last 20 years. This should not come as a surprise though, as the papers effectively open up new directions in so many different areas of particle theory. Her ideas have shaped the discourse in the field from collider phenomenology to cosmology. An unusually broad and powerful field theorist, Randall has also made important contributions to the theory of supersymmetry breaking and phenomenology, inflation, CP violation, electroweak radiative corrections, the axion, heavy quark physics, and dynamical symmetry breaking. Randall's book Warped Passages, describing the brane-world picture without mathematics, is remarkably successful outreach to the general public and was named a New York Times Notable Book in 2005. Her recent books include Knocking on Heaven's Door: How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminated the Universe and the Modern World (with Gino Segre, 2012) and Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs: The Astounding Interconnectedness of the Universe (2015). She has received the Premio Caterina Tomassoni e Felice Pietro Chisesi Award from the University of Rome (2003), the Klopsteg Award from the American Association of Physics Teachers (2006), and the Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize from the American Physical Society (2007).
Lisa Randall earned her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1987 and held professorships at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Princeton University before returning to Harvard in 2001. She currently serves as Frank B. Baird, Jr. Professor of Science. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. Lisa Randall was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2010. | |
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