Department News Archive
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| Headline | Publication | Description |
| Certificates of Distinction for Excellence in Teaching by the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning | Congratulations to the TFs who are being awarded Certificates of Distinction for Excellence in Teaching for Fall 2006: Christopher Gabel, Anne Goodsell, Yevgeny Kats, Jacob Krich, and Esteban Real. These teachers scored 4.5 or higher on the CUE evaluations by their students. | |
| Nanostructured diamond coatings | Physics graduate student Alexander Wissner-Gross has won the 2007 Graduate Student Silver Award from the Materials Research Society for his work on nanostructured diamond coatings that allow ice to exist above room temperature, and a 2007 Dan David Prize Scholarship for Future Energy applications from Tel Aviv University. | |
| Iinterview with Lene Hau | Boston Globe March 17, 2007. |
Boston Globe published an interview with Prof. Lene Hau: "Q&A with Lene Hau", March 17, 2007. |
| AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Prize | Profs. Amir Yacoby, Mikhail Lukin, and Charles Marcus, Harvard grad student Edward Laird, former grad student Jacob Taylor and former post docs Jason Petta and Alexander Johnson, as well as UCSB colleagues Micah Hanson and Arthur Gossard, received the 2006 AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Prize for their research article "Coherent Manipulation of Coupled Electron Spins in Semiconductor Quantum Dots", published in Science (v.309: no.5744, 30 Sep. 2005). The Prize acknowledges an outstanding paper published in the Articles, Research Articles, or Reports sections of Science . | |
| Decagonal and Quasicrystalline Tilings in Medieval Islamic Architecture | Science (315: no. 5815,
23 Feb. 2007); Boston Globe (Feb. 26);, New York Times (Feb. 27); BBC News; All Things Considered. For more media coverage, go to Peter's website. |
Harvard graduate student Peter J. Lu and Princeton Professor Paul J. Steinhardt have published a paper in the journal Science demonstrating how 15th-century Islamic architectural tilings reflect the mathematics of quasicrystals and Penrose tilings, not understood in the west until the 1970s. |
| "Physicists Move Light" | Nature 445,
8 Feb. 2007 ibid., 605-607 New York Times Harvard Gazette. |
Graduate student Naomi Ginsberg, postdoc Sean R. Garner and Prof. Lene Vestergaard Hau made the cover of Nature magazine! The scientists published a letter in Nature, describing their success with extinguishing a slow light pulse in one Bose–Einstein condensate, then subsequently reviving it from a totally different condensate, 160 microns away. |
| Personalized reading list program | newscientisttech.com | Graduate student Alexander Wissner-Gross developed a computer program that generates a list of reading material tailored to a person's individual interests (read more). |
| "Ge/Si nanowire mesoscopic Josephson junctions" | Nature
Nanotechnology 1, p.208-213, Dec. 2006 |
Graduate students Andy Vidan (DEAS) and Jie Xiang (Chemistry), and Profs. Michael Tinkham, Robert Westervelt, and Charles Lieber (DEAS), published an article in Nature Nanotechnology which demonstrates a mesoscopic Josephson junction using a unique semiconductor nanowire. |
| Physics Story of 2006 | The new high precision (0.76 parts per trillion uncertainty) measurement of the electron's magnetic moment by Prof. Gerald Gabrielse, graduate students David Hanneke and Brian Odom, and several colleagues, has been named the Physics Story of 2006 by The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News. | |
| MIT Global Indus Technovators Award | Physics graduate Anita Goel | Physics graduate Anita Goel (2002), the founder and CEO of Nanobiosym, Inc., has been selected as a recipient of the 2006 MIT Global Indus Technovators Award in the category of Biotechnology / Medicine / Healthcare. |
| "Coherent Dynamics of Coupled Electron and Nuclear Spin Qubits in Diamond" | Science 314: Sep. 14, 2006 |
Prof. Mikhail Lukin, Harvard Physics graduate students L. Childress and J. M. Taylor, Harvard research Scholars M. Gurudev Dutt and A. S. Zibrov, and colleagues from Texas A&M University and Universitat Stuttgart, published an article in Science describing the results of their research which "opens the door to coherent manipulation of individual isolated nuclear spins in a solid-state environment even at room temperature". (read the article) |
| Certificates of Distinction for Excellence in Teaching by the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning | The following Physics section leaders have been awarded the Certificates of Distinction for the Spring 2006 semester: Kristi Adamson, Clifford Cheung, Joshua Goldman, Bryan Ho, Yevgeny Kats, William Kolthammer, Corry Lee, Andrii Pashin, Rachel Pepper, Jihye Seo, Shaun Serej, and Alexander Wissner-Gross. | |
| The MacArthur Foundation Award | Gazette Sep. 19, 2006 |
Prof. Matias Zaldarriaga was honored by the MacArthur Foundation (read the Gazette story). |
| One of the "Brilliant 10" | Popular Science Magazine | Prof. Nima Arkani-Hamed was nominated one of the "Brilliant 10" by Popular Science Magazine (read the article on popsi.com). |
Energy conservation at Harvard Physics
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"Best IT Practices at Harvard"
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Our Computer Services Department's energy conservation efforts have been recognized by the Harvard Green Campus Initiative! Read the article on HGCI website. |
| "Particle physics: A finer constant" | Nature 442: Aug. 3, 2006 |
• Prof. Gabrielse and colleagues improve the precision of the fine-structure constant, which is central to understanding the electromagnetic force. Read the article. |
| "Direct electronic measurement of the spin Hall effect" | Nature 442: July 13, 2006 |
Harvard Postdoctoral Fellow Sergio O. Valenzuela and Prof. Michael Tinkham have observed that in a wire carrying a spin-polarized current a charge imbalance is created from one side of the wire to the other, demonstrating that electrons with opposite spins tend to drift in opposite directions. Read the article in Nature. |
| Postdoc Jason Petta won the 2006 Oxford Instruments' Lee Osheroff Richardson Prize. | 2006 Lee Osheroff Richardson prize | |
| Prof. Eric Heller has been elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences. | Harvard
Gazette Apr 17, 2006 |
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| New OSETI telescope | boston.com | Prof. Paul Horowitz and the OSETI group will soon be using a new 72" optical telescope to search the skies for signs of intelligent life. |
| LHC Olympics | Prof. Nima Arkani-Hamed was one of the organizers of "LHC (Large Hadron Collider) Olympics", a workshop held recently at CERN. In this workshop, teams of theorists, including several Harvard physics students, studied fake data in order to explore unproven theories, as preparation for the strange data they may get when the particle accelerator goes live. Read the article in Nature (440, 16 March 2006). | |
| Science profiles the physics graduate student Peter Lu | Science |
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| Physics section leaders have been awarded the Certificates of Distinction for Excellence in Teaching. | The following Physics section leaders have been awarded the Certificates of Distinction for Excellence in Teaching for the Fall 2005 semester: Winston Tao, Lars Grant, David Morin, Andrii Pashin, Geoffry Svacha, Thomas Hayes, Thomas Hartman, Jesse Thaler, Esteban Real, Liang Jiang, William Ritter, Suvrat Raju. | |
Prof. Peter Galison has been appointed to the position of University Professor. |
Gazette |
Prof. Peter Galison has been appointed to the position of University Professor. The University Professorships, first created by the President and Fellows in 1935, are chairs intended for "individuals of distinction ... working on the frontiers of knowledge, and in such a way as to cross the conventional boundaries of the specialties." |
Prof. Lisa Randall's research profiled |
Harvard
Crimson Newsweek |
Prof.
Lisa Randall's research profiled in Harvard Crimson: Supersymmetry and Parallel Dimensions: Physicist Randall among world's leading string theorists, by Adrian Smith, Jan 9 , 2006, and in Newsweek: "Looking at the Earth's tiniest particles to explain the mysteries of the cosmos" by Jerry Adler, Jan 2, 2006. |
| New York Times' Notable Books of the Year |
New York
Times Dec. 4, 2005 |
Prof. Lisa Randall's book, Warped Passages: Unravelling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimentions, has been named one of the New York Times' 100 Notable Books of the Year. |
| Prof. Roy J. Glauber has been awarded the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics | nobelprize.org | Prof. Roy J. Glauber has been awarded the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his contribution to the quantum theory of optical coherence." He shares this prize with John L. Hall and Theodor W. Hansch. A press conference took place at 11:00am and a reception at 4:00pm on Tuesday, 4th October, in the Physics Research Library. Read the official announcement and the NY Times article. |
| Three Harvard Physics faculty members have been nominated to named chairs.: | The following faculty members
have been nominated to named chairs: Prof. John Huth: Donner Professor of Science Prof. David Nelson: Arthur K. Solomon Professor of Biophysics Prof. Mara Prentiss: Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics |
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| Using physics to understand biology: Goel puts DNA to the test | Harvard
Gazette |
Anita Goel (class of '02), who was named one of the world's 35 most promising researchers under the age of 35 by MIT's Technology Review Magazine, is using the tools of physics to examine one of the most basic processes of biology. |
| On Gravity, Oreos and a Theory of Everything. | New York
Times Nov. 1, 2005 |
Prof. Lisa Randall's research is profiled in New York Times |
| • New President of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. | Michael Leach, the Director of the Physics Research Library, has been elected President of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. | |
| LeRoy Apker Award. | Nathaniel Craig (class of '05) has won American Physical Society's LeRoy Apker Award. This award is given annually to an undergraduate student "to recognize outstanding achievements in physics... and thereby provide encouragement to young physicists who have demonstrated great potential for future scientific accomplishment". | |
| "Coherent Manipulation of Coupled Electron Spins in Semiconductor Quantum Dots" | Science v.309, no.5744, Sept. 30, 2005 |
Prof. Mikhail Lukin and Prof. Charles Marcus, with colleagues from Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, and University of California at Santa Barbara, published a research article in Science. |
| William Edelstein is the winner of its Industrial Applications in Physics Prize | The American Institute of Physics (AIP) has named William Edelstein the winner of its Industrial Applications in Physics Prize "for his pioneering developments leading to commercialization of high-resolution Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) for medical applications." Edelstein defended his PhD at Harvard in 1974; his advisor was Robert Pound, a pioneer in early magnetic resonance research. Read more. | |
| Physics TFs awarded the Certificates of Distinction for Excellence in Teaching! | The following Physics TFs have been awarded the Certificates of Distinction for Excellence in Teaching for the Spring 2005 semester: Alexander Dahlen, Antonio Copete, Stephen Doret, Morten Ernebjerg, Joshua Goldman, Lars Grant, Nicholas Guise, Mohammad Hafezi, Can Kilic, Daniel Larson, Suzanne Rousseau, Shaun Serej, Jay Vaishnav, and Vincenzo Vitelli (Larson, Guise and Goldman taught core classes). | |
| Carol Davis recently celebrated her thirty-fifth year with the Harvard Physics Department! | Carol has supported a grand total of sixteen professors: Kenneth Bainbridge, Andrew Foland, Melissa Franklin, Wendell Furry, Eric Heller, Paul Horowitz, John Huth, Paul Martin, Masahiro Morii, Frank Pipkin, Robert Pound, Edward Purcell, Norman Ramsey, Christopher Stubbs, Karl Strauch, and Jabez Currry Street. | |
| "Across the universe" | Boston Globe, Sep. 4, 2005. |
• Prof. Lisa Randall talks about hidden dimensions - and the importance of visible women in the field: Her new book, Warped Passages: Unraveling The Mysteries Of The Universe's Hidden Dimensions, has been released by Harper Collins. |
| New book by Prof. Lisa Randall | • Prof.Randall's new book, Warped Passages: Unraveling The Mysteries Of The Universe's Hidden Dimensions, has been released by Harper Collins. | |
| New physics faculty members | The department welcomes three new faculty members: Prof. Markus Greiner, Prof. Vinothan Manoharan and Prof. Subir Sachdev. | |
| "Lacking Hard Data, Theorists Try Democracy" | NYTimes Aug. 2, 2005 |
Prof. Nima Arkani-Hamed and Prof. Andrew Strominger talk about the future of the String Theory. Read the New York Time article on "The Next Superstring Revolution," a panel discussion which took place at the yearly congress of string theorists Strings05, held in mid-July at the University of Toronto. |
| New adaptive technology for physicists! | Nature 435: 552-554 June 2, 2005 |
Graduate student David Thompson and the Adaptive Technology Laboratory at Harvard wrote a program to convert LaTeX (a typesetting language widely used by physicists) into WinTriangle, an open-source software for visually impaired. Read the article at |
| "Chinese made first use of diamond" | BBC News
World Edition May 17, 2005 see also: Encyclopedia Britannica |
Harvard physics graduate student Peter J. Lu's research on precise machinery used in ancient China |
| "Levenson Teaching Awards Distributed" | Harvard
Crimson May 5, 2005 |
Harvard Physics Graduate Student and Teaching Fellow Morten Ernebjerg received this year's Joseph R. Levenson Teaching Prize for teaching excellence. This prize is awarded each year to one senior and one junior faculty member, as well as one Teaching Fellow, on the basis of student nominations submitted to the UC. |
| Congratulations to Harvard Physics NSF/NDSEG Fellowship Winners! | 2005 Harvard Physics NSF/NDSEG Fellowship winners are: Jonathon Gillen, Jonathan Heckman, David Hoogerheide, Gene-Wei Li, Jeremy Munday, Mark Romanowsky, Jonathan Simon, and Mark Winkler | |
| "Monodisperse Double Emulsions Generated from a MicrocapillaryDevice" | Science v.308: no.5721, p.537-541, 22 Apr. 05 also:Harvard Gazette May 5, 2005 |
A team of Harvard researchers, led by Prof. David Weitz, has developed a technique that allows the precise formation of double emulsions that offers new ways to deliver drugs, nutrients, and other consumer and industrial products. |
| "Spin-Charge Separation and Localization in One Dimension". | Science v.308: no.5718, p.88-92 Apr. 1, 2005 |
Harvard Junior Fellow Yaroslav Tserkovnyak and Prof. Bertrand Halperin, with colleagues from the Weizmann Institute of Science and from Bell Labs published an article in on measurements of quantum many-body modes in ballistic wires and their dependence on Coulomb interactions. |
| "Nanotechnology: New spin on correlated electrons" | Nature v.434, p.45 -452 Mar 24, 2005 |
Harvard Graduate student Ronald Potok and David Goldhaber-Gordon of Stanford University published an article on nanotechnology in Nature |
| Certificates of Distinction in Teaching awarded to Harvard physics Graduate Students and Teaching Assistants | Certificates of Distinction in Teaching has been awarded to TFs (Physics graduate students) Anne Goodsell, Mark Romanowsky, Morten Ernebjerg, Daniel Sherman, Can Kilic, Nicholas Guise, Rakhi Mahbubani, Anita Bowles, and Jian Huang; TAs Girma Hailu and Winston Tao; and scientific instrument maker Joseph Peidle. | |
| "In the Buff: Stone Age tools may have derived luster from diamond" | Science
News v.167: no.8, p.116 Feb. 19, 2005 also: listen to All Things Considered |
Harvard physics graduate student Peter J. Lu is doing research on the use of polishing techniques using industrial diamonds in ancient China . |
| "Detection
and Quantized Conductance of Neutral Atoms Near a Charged
Carbon Nanotube" |
Physical
Review Letters v. 94 , 066102 Feb. 18, 2005 |
Grad Students Trygve Ristroph and Anne Goodsell with Professors Jene Golovchenko and Lene Vestergaard Hau have published a paper describing a novel single atom detector which uses the high electric field surrounding a charged single-walled carbon nanotube to attract and field-ionize neutral atoms and reveal quantized atomic conduction. The paper was selected for the Virtual Journal of Nanoscale Science and Technology, vol. 11, issue 8 (Feb 28, 2005). |
| "Einstein's Legacy: Challenges in Physics" | Science v.30: no. 5711 Feb. 11, 2005 |
The theoretical work of Prof. Arkani-Hamed and Prof. Lisa Randall and the experimental work of Prof. Gerald Gabrielse and Prof. Ron Walsworth are featured in a special issue of Science, timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of Einstein's "miraculous year". |
| "So where has all the antimatter gone?" | Harvard
Gazette Feb. 10, 2005 |
Prof. Gerald Gabrielse and the ATRAP Collaboration plot ways to cool and slow down antihydrogen - A Harvard Gazette story by By William J. Cromie. |
| "Observation of Hybrid Soliton Vortex-Ring Structures in Bose-Einstein Condensates" | Physical
Review Letters v. 94, 040403 Feb. 4, 2005 |
Prof. Lene Vestergaard Hau, Harvard physics graduate student Naomi Ginsberg, and theorist Joachim Brand (Max Planck Institute, Dresden) have observed novel hybrid soliton vortex-ring structures in a Bose-Einstein condensate and devised a theory to explain these complex nonlinear excitations. . |
| "Demonstration of frequency encoding in neutral atom lithography" | New Journal
of Physics Feb. 9, 2005 |
Prof. Mara Prentiss published a paper in Institute of Physics (IOP) Publishing's open access journal New Journal of Physics. |
| "A Theory of Everything" | Nature,
433: no. 7023 Jan. 20, 2005 |
Prof. Lisa Randall is among the prominent physicists commenting on the future of a Unified Theory in the "Year of Physics" issue of Nature. |
| "Thinking Small: From Quantum Materials Design to 'Voodoo Physics' in the Nanoscientists' Weird World" | Harvard Magazine Jan./Feb. 2005 | An article highlighting the research of several Harvard nanoscientists, including Professors Robert Westervelt and Charles Marcus. |
| "String Theory, at 20, Explains It All (or Not)" | New York
Times Dec. 7, 2004 |
A New York Times article highlighting the research of Professors Andrew Strominger and Cumrun Vafa, among others. |
| "String Theory Gets Real--Sort Of" | Science v. 306: no.1460-1462 Nov.26, 2004 |
Professor Andrew Strominger's research is profiled in Science |
| "Looking to Supercold Atoms for Answers," | Harvard
Gazette Nov. 4, 2004 |
A story about the research of Professor John Doyle. |
| Boston Globe July 26, 2004 |
Feature story on Professor Nima Arkani-Hamed | |
| "A black hole theory zapped" | Boston
Globe |
Professor Andrew Strominger talks about Stephen Hawking's recent concession that one of his long-held theories on the nature of black holes is incorrec |
| "Quantum Network to Deliver Secure Messages" | Harvard
Gazette Aug. 2, 2004 |
Story about the first quantum network, operating in Boston, which is being led by Professor Tai T. Wu. |
| "Early Precision Compound Machine from Ancient China" | newscientist.com The BBC Nature Harvard Gazette |
Harvard physics graduate student Peter J. Lu published a paper in Science magazine where Lu demonstrates that spiral patterns carved into a small jade ring show that China was using complex machines more than 2500 years ago. |
| Loeb Physics Lecturer Explains String Theory | Harvard
Gazette Apr. 29.2004 |
Brian Greene of Columbia gives lectures on String Theory |
| Seeing the Hole Truth, Small Holes Reveal Big Views | Harvard
Gazette, Sep. 5, 2003 |
Prof. Jene Golovchenko and his research group |
| If I Had A Blow Torch, I'd Blow Torch in the Morning | Harvard
Crimson Feb. 10, 2003 |
Profile of Harvard Physics/DEAS machine shop |
| Ombudsmen Open for Business | Harvard
Gazette Feb. 6, 2003 |
Prof. Ehrenreich's appointment as University Ombudsman |
| Deconstructing Dimensions to Understand the Universe | Harvard
Gazette Feb. 6, 2003 |
Profile of Prof. Nima Arkani-Hamed |
| Scientists Look Inside Antimatter | Harvard
Gazette Nov. 14, 2002 |
Story on work of Prof. Gerald Gabrielse's research |
| Antimatter Atoms in the Lab Shed Light on Universe | USA Today Oct. 30, 2002 |
Prof. Gerald Gabrielse and team at CERN produce antihydrogen |
| The Big Picture: Norman Ramsey | Harvard
Gazette May 15, 2002 |
Profile of Prof. Norman Ramsey |
| Not-So-Quantum Leap | New York
Times Apr. 2, 2002 |
Prof. Eric Heller on combining art and physics |
| Hau Wins MacArthur | Harvard
Gazette Oct. 25, 2001 |
Prof. Lene Hau wins prestigious fellowship |
| New Way to "See" DNA | Harvard
Gazette Aug. 2, 2001 |
Profile of Prof. Golovchenko's research |
| Coldest Place in the Universe | Harvard
Gazette Jun2 14, 2001 |
Prof. Hau's research on slowing light |
| Telescopes
Search for Beacons from E.T. |
Harvard
Gazette feb. 22, 2001 |
Prof. Horowitz work on Optical Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence |
| Researchers
now able to stop, restart light |
Harvard
Gazette Jan. 24, 2001 |
Prof. Hau's research on slowing light |
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