William D. Phillips, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics,
will speak on “Almost Absolute Zero: The Story of Laser Cooling”
on Thursday, Feb. 7, at 7:30 p.m. in the Nott Memorial.
His talk, free and open to the public, is part of the
College's “Perspectives at the Nott”
lecture series.
Phillips, a leading researcher in ultra-low temperature
atomic physics at the National Institute of Standards and
Technology, received the 1997 Nobel Prize.
The cooling and trapping of atoms, a discipline that
emerged in the mid-1970's with the advent of laboratory lasers, have
allowed scientists to observe and measure quantum phenomena in atoms.
Phillips' lecture, aimed at the nonscientist, will describe
how laser cooling works.