Steven Chu

Physicist, born in St Louis, Missouri, USA. He was a member of the technical staff at Bell Telephone Laboratories (1976–8) and head of the quantum electronics and research department of AT & T Bell Laboratories (1983–7) before becoming a physics professor at Stanford. He has made major contributions to laser spectroscopy, the analysis of positronium atoms, and studies of gaseous sodium at temperatures approaching absolute zero. He shared the 1997 Nobel Prize for Physics with Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and William D Phillips for work on cooling and trapping atoms with laser light.

Steven Chu is a physicists and winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize for his work on using lasers to trap and cool atoms. He is currently a Professor at Stanford and director of Lawrence Berkeley Labs.