Ramapo Magazine

Lecture Given By Physics Nobel Laureate

William D. Phillips, Ph.D., a Fellow at the National Institute of Standards and Technology who was awarded the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics, gave a public lecture at Ramapo College on April 25. The lecture, “Absolute Zero: The Story of Laser Cooling and Trapping,” was an updated version of the Nobel Lecture given in 1997. It was aimed at an audience of non-scientists, but discussed some of the newest developments in physics.

The lecture described how laser cooling works and why it works better than anyone expected it to. “We can now cool a gas of atoms to less than a millionth of a degree above absolute zero—the coldest temperatures in the universe,” Phillips said. “Atoms this cold exhibit weird and wonderful properties and are being used for applications ranging from super-accurate atomic clocks to new quantum devices like atom lasers.”

Phillips is internationally known for advancing basic knowledge and new techniques to chill atoms to extremely low temperatures, which has allowed scientists to observe and measure quantum phenomena in atoms that seem to defy the physical principles governing our tangible room-temperature realm.

Phillips graduated from Juniata College summa cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in physics. He earned his Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is currently a National Institute of Standards and Technology fellow and leader of the Laser Cooling and Trapping Group in the Atomic Physics Division of NIST’s Physics Laboratory.

The lecture was in conjunction with a retirement celebration for Dr. Teodoro Halpern, a physics professor at Ramapo College for more than 25 years. Phillips was a student of Halpern’s at Argonne National Labs.