Nobel ties in physics
The two winners of this year’s Nobel Prize in physics, who were announced today, have more than quantum optics in common. They have early ties to Harvard University. David J. Wineland of the University of Colorado, Boulder, earned an A.M. in 1966 and a Ph.D. in physics at Harvard in 1970. Serge Haroche, a professor at Collège de France in Paris, was a Loeb Lecturer at Harvard in 1980 and a visiting professor in 1981. He last visited Harvard on Feb. 27 for a colloquium sponsored by the Department of Physics. His lecture was titled “Juggling with Photons in a Box to Explore the Quantum World.” Wineland’s doctoral adviser was Norman F. Ramsey Jr., the 1989 winner of the Nobel in physics. (Harvard’s Physics Department has 10 Nobel Prize winners.) Ramsey, who died in 2011, conducted the research that provided the theoretical underpinnings for the atomic clock. Atomic clocks based on the radioactive element...