Nobel laureate in physics to speak on campus Feb. 22

Nobel Prize winner in physics Steve Chu will speak on campus at 3 p.m. Friday, Feb. 22. His lecture, "Laser Cooling and Trapping: From Atomic Clocks to Watching Biomolecules Move, One Molecule at a Time," will be held in the Mills Godwin Jr. Life Sciences Building auditorium. It is free and open to the public. Chu has indicated that he will frame his talk such that it will appeal to a broad audience of faculty and students.

Chair of the physics department at Stanford University, Chu previously headed the Quantum Electronics Research Department of Bell Labs in Holmdel, N.J. He received his doctorate in physics from the University of California, Berkeley, and was recognized with the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics.

It was Chu who determined that in order to manipulate individual atoms, they would have to be cooled to temperatures close to absolute zero. This discovery led to his work on the technique of laser cooling, which earned him the Nobel Prize.

Chu's visit is being hosted by the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Hampton Roads IEEE LEOS chapter. For more information call Amin Dharamsi at 683-4467.