Nobel goes to alumnus Steven Chu

Chu, along with William Phillips and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, was cited for developing novel ways to cool atoms to super-low temperatures with laser light.

The work allows researchers to manipulate matter at a temperature that was previously unattainable, and raises the possibility of technologies based in the subatomic realm of quantum physics.

"The new methods of investigation that the Nobel laureates have developed have contributed greatly to increasing our knowledge of the interplay between radiation and matter," the citation from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said. The work, the citation added, "may lead to the design of more-precise atomic clocks for use in space navigation and accurate determination of position."

A double major at Rochester, Chu graduated in 1970 with a B.S. in physics and a B.A. in mathematics. He went on to earn his Ph.D. at Berkeley and is now professor of physics at Stanford.

Chu becomes the seventh Nobel laureate to have studied or taught at Rochester. The others: chemist Vincent du Vigneaud '27M (Ph.D.); medical researchers Arthur Kornberg '41M (MD) and Carleton Gajdusek '42; and faculty members George Hoyt Whipple, founding dean of the medical school; biochemist Henrik Dam, at the medical school in the 1940s; and economist Robert Fogel, on the economics faculty during the '60s and '70s.