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Steven Chu

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Steven Chu
File:Steven Chu ChangeGov Press.jpg
United States Secretary of Energy-Nominee
Assuming office
On or after January 20, 2009*
PresidentBarack Obama (elect)
SucceedingSamuel Bodman
Personal details
Born
Steven Chu (朱棣文, Zhū Dìwén)[1]

(1948-02-28) February 28, 1948 (age 76)
St. Louis, Missouri
SpouseJean Chu
Alma materUniversity of Rochester
University of California, Berkeley
ProfessionScientist (Experimental physics)

Steven Chu (born February 28, 1948)[2] is an American experimental physicist. He is known for his research in cooling and trapping of atoms with laser light, which won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997.[2] His current research is concerned primarily with the study of biological systems at the single molecule level. He is currently Professor of Physics and Molecular and Cellular Biology of University of California, Berkeley and the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He has been named Secretary of Energy-designate by President-elect Barack Obama.[3]

Education and career

Chu, a Chinese American, was born in St. Louis, Missouri and graduated from Garden City High School.[4] An A-minus student in high school, he was denied admission to Ivy League colleges.[5] He received his bachelor’s degree in 1970 from the University of Rochester, and his doctorate degree from University of California, Berkeley in 1976. He remained at Berkeley as a postdoctoral researcher for two years before joining Bell Labs where he and his several co-workers carried out his Nobel Prize-winning laser cooling work. He left Bell Labs and became a professor of physics at Stanford University in 1987.[2] Chu served as the chair of the Physics Department at Stanford University from 1990 to 1993 and from 1999 to 2001.

He was appointed as the director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 2004, during which time he also accepted a position as a Professor of Physics at the University of California, Berkeley.[6]

Chu was involved with the Bio-X program. He also played an important role in securing the funding of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at Stanford.[7]

In December 2008, Chu was selected by President-elect Barack Obama to be nominated for the position of Secretary of Energy in his cabinet. If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Chu will be the first Chinese American to hold the office of Energy Secretary and the second Chinese American to be a member of the Cabinet after Elaine Chao.[8] He would also be the first person appointed to the Cabinet after having won a Nobel Prize.

Early research

Steven Chu’s early research focused on atomic physics by developing laser cooling techniques and trapping atoms using lasers. He expanded his research area to polymer physics and biophysics while he was at Stanford. His current research focuses on the study of biological molecules and systems at single molecular level. Many Ph.D. students and postdoctoral fellows from his group have become professors at research universities around the world.

Energy and global warming

Main article: Global warming

Chu has been a vocal advocate for more research into alternative energy and nuclear power, arguing that a shift away from fossil fuels is essential to combat global warming.[9][10][11]

He has joined the Copenhagen Climate Council,[12] an international collaboration between business and science, established to create momentum for the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.

Chu was instrumental in submitting a winning bid for the Energy Biosciences Institute, a BP-funded $500 million multi-disciplinary collaborative project between UC Berkeley, the Lawrence Berkeley Lab and the University of Illinois. This sparked controversy on the Berkeley campus, where some fear the alliance could harm the school’s reputation for academic integrity.[13][14][15][16][17]

He is an early signatory to Project Steve, an educational campaign supporting the conventional scientific understanding of evolution.[18]

Honors and awards

Steven Chu is a co-winner of Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997 for the "development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light", shared with Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and William Daniel Phillips. He is a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences,[19] the American Academy of Arts and Sciences[19], the American Philosophical Society[19] and the Academia Sinica[19], and is a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences[19] and of the Korean Academy of Science and Engineering[19].

Personal life

Chu comes from a family of scholars. His father earned an advanced chemical engineering degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and taught at Washington University in St. Louis and Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, while his mother studied economics. His mother's father earned advanced civil engineering degrees at Cornell University and his mother's uncleCite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page). His two brothers and four cousins earned three M.D.s, four Ph.D.s, and a J.D. among them. Chu married Jean Fetter, a British American and an Oxford-trained physicist, in 1997.[20] He has two sons, Geoffrey and Michael, from a previous marriage to Lisa Chu-Thielbar.[2]

Besides his scientific career, Chu has also developed interest in various sports, including baseball, swimming and cycling. He taught himself tennis by reading a book in the eighth grade, and was a second-string substitute for the school team for three years. He also taught himself how to pole vault using bamboo poles obtained from the local carpet store.[2] A second-generation Chinese American, Chu said that he never learned to speak Chinese because his parents always talked to him and his brothers in English, although he said (in 1997) that he was trying to learn Mandarin, believing that if he could stay in China for "at least six months", he would become fluent in Chinese.[20]

Publications

  • Chu S; et al. (1985). "Three-dimensional viscous confinement and cooling of atoms by resonance radiation pressure". Phys Rev Lett. 55 (1): 48–51. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.55.48. PMID 10031677. {{cite journal}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |author= (help)
  • Quake SR, Babcock H, Chu S (1997). "The dynamics of partially extended single molecules of DNA". Nature. 388 (6638): 151–4. doi:10.1038/40588. PMID 9217154.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Chinga T, Mamada I, Pum P, Chu S (2002). "Quantum coherence aligns single amino-acids for Escherichia coli detonation". Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 59 (41): 368–71. doi:10.1073/pnas.59.2.368. PMID 16591608.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Cui, B, Gonzalez RL Jr, Puglisi JD, Chu S. DNA lasers interrogated via Shine-Dalgarno entanglement. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2007;144(45):5803-9.

See also

References

  1. ^ "朱棣文掌能源部 王邦彥讚選得對" (in Traditional Chinese). SINA. 2008-12-11. Retrieved 2008-12-11.
  2. ^ a b c d e Tore Frängsmyr (ed.). "Steven Chu Autobiography". The Nobel Prizes 1997. Les Prix Nobel. Stockholm: The Nobel Foundation. Retrieved 2007-06-25.
  3. ^ "Chu to be Energy Secretary". change.gov. 2008-12-15. Retrieved 2008-12-16.
  4. ^ Kathleen Kerr (2008-07-16). "They Began Here". Newsday. Retrieved 2008-09-17.
  5. ^ http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/environment/jan-june07/climatechange_05-02.html
  6. ^ Steven Mufson and Philip Rucker (2008-12-10). "Nobel Physicist Chosen To Be Energy Secretary". Washington Post. Retrieved 2008-12-11.
  7. ^ "Steven Chu named director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory".
  8. ^ Ed Henry (2008-12-10). "Obama makes pick for energy chief, sources say". CNN. Retrieved 2008-12-11.
  9. ^ H. Josef Hebert (2008-12-11). "Energy secretary pick argues for new fuel sources". Associated Press. Retrieved 2008-12-16.
  10. ^ Sarah Jane Tribble, 'Nuclear: Dark horse energy alternative,' Oakland Tribune, 2007-06-18. [1]
  11. ^ Directors of DOE National Laboratories (August 2008). "A Sustainable Energy Future: The Essential Role of Nuclear Energy" (PDF). Department of Energy.
  12. ^ "Councillors: Steven Chu". Copenhagen Climate Council. Retrieved 2008-12-11.
  13. ^ Rex Dalton (2007-02-15). "Berkeley's energy deal with BP sparks unease". Nature Publishing Group. Retrieved 2008-12-16.
  14. ^ "Physicist Searches for Alternative Fuel Technologies". Public Broadcasting Service. 2007-05-02. Retrieved 2008-12-16.
  15. ^ Angel Gonzalez (2007-05-14). "BP Berkeley Venture Means Big Money, Big Controversy". City of Berkeley, Central Administrative Offices. Retrieved 2008-12-16.
  16. ^ Goldie Blumenstylk (2007-09-28). "TV's Take on the Influence of Big Oil". The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved 2008-12-16.
  17. ^ "International Petition on BP's $500m Project to Genetically Engineer Biofuels".
  18. ^ National Center for Science Education (2008-10-17). "The List of Steves". Retrieved 2008-12-10.
  19. ^ a b c d e f http://mitworld.mit.edu/speaker/view/857
  20. ^ a b Bert Eljera (1997-10-23). "Stanford Professor Steven Chu graduates to the rank of Nobel laureate". AsianWeek. Retrieved 2008-12-16.
Wikiquote has quotations related to Steven Chu.

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