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Steven Chu

Born 1948.

A 1997 co-winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, Steven Chu is an American physicist who was the 12th Secretary of Energy in the United States.

He is known for his work on cooling and trapping atoms using laser light, allowing for a more accurate study of the individual chilled atoms. This research won him the Nobel Prize, which he shared with Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and William D. Phillips, who both later expanded his research.

Chu is one of the leading advocates of nuclear power and renewable energy use, believing that shifting the source of power from fossil fuels can help in battling the adverse effects of climate change.

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Childhood Years and Family Background

Steven Chu comes from a family of scholars and it is no shock to have such a brilliant mind considering his family’s background. Before he was born on February 28, 1948 in St. Louis Missouri, Ju Chin Chu, his father, had moved to the United States in order to further his education in chemical engineering and attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After two years, Ching Chen Li, Steven Chu’s mother, joined his father to study economics. His father held teaching positions at Washington University and Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute.

There is no denying how important good education was for Steven Chu’s family, and most of his elders obtained Ph.D.’s in either engineering or science. To Steven, he felt as if schoolwork was a chore rather than intellectual adventures, but it was geometry which made him appreciate mathematics.

Strange as it may sound to some, his life did not revolve around academic endeavors. He also had a fondness for making plastic model warships and planes, and the enjoyed creating numerous gadgets with several moving parts. With a friend, Chu played with homemade rockets and he started a business out of a chemistry-based hobby by testing the soil of neighbor’s lawns for missing nutrients and acidity levels.

Educational Background and Career

Chu graduated from Garden City High School and, continuing his eduacation, received his B.S. Degree in Physics and a B.A. Degree in Mathematics from the University of Rochester in 1970. In 1976, Chu obtained support from a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship while working towards his doctorate from the University of California.

After receiving his doctorate, Chu remained in the University of California for two years as a postdoctoral researcher before joining Bell Labs where, together with his co-workers, worked on their laser-cooling project which would win him the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1997. The scientists discovered a process to cool atoms by using six laser beams, opposed in pairs, and placed in three directions at right angles to each other. Capturing atoms with this process caused the atoms to reduce in speed and their temperature neared absolute zero. This “optical molasses” effect enabled scientists to study the individual chilled atoms with greater accuracy. Chu shared the Nobel Prize with Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and William D. Phillips who both later expanded on Chu’s research.

Following his career in Bell Labs, Chu became a physics professors at Stanford University in 1987, and served as the university’s physics department chair from 1990-1993 and again in 1999-2001.

During his years in Stanford Chu, together with three other university professors, began the Bio-X Program. It focused on the interdisciplinary research involved in medicine and biology. They also played a key role for the procurement of funds for the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology.

Under Chu’s leadership, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory became a center for research efforts on solar energy and biofuels. In August 2004 he was appointed as Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s director, and later on he joined the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology and UC Berkeley’s Department of Physics.

Interested in solar energy research, he led the Helios project whose aim is to find and develop ways on how to harness solar energy as a renewable energy source which can be used for transportation.

In 2009 when he became the 12th Secretary of Energy of the United States, and he was sworn under President Barack Obama’s administration. He is the first person to have become a member of the U.S. Cabinet after winning the Nobel Prize. He served from 2009-2013 and continued his other scientific work alongside his Secretary of Energy duties.

Advocacies

Steven Chu is a vocal advocate and openly expresses his support for more research efforts for the use of nuclear power and renewable energy. He became a member of the Copenhagen Climate Council, created to build momentum for the United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Copenhagen in 2009. He believes that by shifting away from using fossil fuels, the negative effects of climate change as well as global warming can be battled.

He is also known for advocating the roofs of buildings and roads have white or light colors, in order to reflect more sunlight back to space to help mitigate the effects of global warming.

Awards and Other Recognitions

In addition to being a co-winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize for Physics award for his work on laser cooling for atoms, he has also received other awards including the Humboldt Prize in 1995, given by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and several honorary doctorates and degrees.

Chu has two sons from his previous marriage with Lisa Chu-Thielbar, and in 1997, married British American Jean Fetter who is an Oxford trained physicist.

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Alphabetical List of Scientists

Louis Agassiz | Maria Gaetana Agnesi | Al-BattaniAbu Nasr Al-Farabi | Alhazen | Jim Al-Khalili | Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi | Mihailo Petrovic Alas | Angel Alcala | Salim Ali | Luis Alvarez | Andre Marie Ampère | Anaximander | Carl Anderson | Mary Anning | Virginia Apgar | Archimedes | Agnes Arber | Aristarchus | Aristotle | Svante Arrhenius | Oswald Avery | Amedeo Avogadro | Avicenna

Charles Babbage | Francis Bacon | Alexander Bain | John Logie Baird | Joseph Banks | Ramon Barba | John Bardeen | Charles Barkla | Ibn Battuta | William Bayliss | George Beadle | Arnold Orville Beckman | Henri Becquerel | Emil Adolf Behring | Alexander Graham Bell | Emile Berliner | Claude Bernard | Timothy John Berners-Lee | Daniel Bernoulli | Jacob Berzelius | Henry Bessemer | Hans Bethe | Homi Jehangir Bhabha | Alfred Binet | Clarence Birdseye | Kristian Birkeland | James Black | Elizabeth Blackwell | Alfred Blalock | Katharine Burr Blodgett | Franz Boas | David Bohm | Aage Bohr | Niels Bohr | Ludwig Boltzmann | Max Born | Carl Bosch | Robert Bosch | Jagadish Chandra Bose | Satyendra Nath Bose | Walther Wilhelm Georg Bothe | Robert Boyle | Lawrence Bragg | Tycho Brahe | Brahmagupta | Hennig Brand | Georg Brandt | Wernher Von Braun | J Harlen Bretz | Louis de Broglie | Alexander Brongniart | Robert Brown | Michael E. Brown | Lester R. Brown | Eduard Buchner | Linda Buck | William Buckland | Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon | Robert Bunsen | Luther Burbank | Jocelyn Bell Burnell | Macfarlane Burnet | Thomas Burnet

Benjamin Cabrera | Santiago Ramon y Cajal | Rachel Carson | George Washington Carver | Henry Cavendish | Anders Celsius | James Chadwick | Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar | Erwin Chargaff | Noam Chomsky | Steven Chu | Leland Clark | John Cockcroft | Arthur Compton | Nicolaus Copernicus | Gerty Theresa Cori | Charles-Augustin de Coulomb | Jacques Cousteau | Brian Cox | Francis Crick | James Croll | Nicholas Culpeper | Marie Curie | Pierre Curie | Georges Cuvier | Adalbert Czerny

Gottlieb Daimler | John Dalton | James Dwight Dana | Charles Darwin | Humphry Davy | Peter Debye | Max Delbruck | Jean Andre Deluc | Democritus | René Descartes | Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel | Diophantus | Paul Dirac | Prokop Divis | Theodosius Dobzhansky | Frank Drake | K. Eric Drexler

John Eccles | Arthur Eddington | Thomas Edison | Paul Ehrlich | Albert Einstein | Gertrude Elion | Empedocles | Eratosthenes | Euclid | Eudoxus | Leonhard Euler

Michael Faraday | Pierre de Fermat | Enrico Fermi | Richard Feynman | Fibonacci – Leonardo of Pisa | Emil Fischer | Ronald Fisher | Alexander Fleming | John Ambrose Fleming | Howard Florey | Henry Ford | Lee De Forest | Dian Fossey | Leon Foucault | Benjamin Franklin | Rosalind Franklin | Sigmund Freud | Elizebeth Smith Friedman

Galen | Galileo Galilei | Francis Galton | Luigi Galvani | George Gamow | Martin Gardner | Carl Friedrich Gauss | Murray Gell-Mann | Sophie Germain | Willard Gibbs | William Gilbert | Sheldon Lee Glashow | Robert Goddard | Maria Goeppert-Mayer | Thomas Gold | Jane Goodall | Stephen Jay Gould | Otto von Guericke

Fritz Haber | Ernst Haeckel | Otto Hahn | Albrecht von Haller | Edmund Halley | Alister Hardy | Thomas Harriot | William Harvey | Stephen Hawking | Otto Haxel | Werner Heisenberg | Hermann von Helmholtz | Jan Baptist von Helmont | Joseph Henry | Caroline Herschel | John Herschel | William Herschel | Gustav Ludwig Hertz | Heinrich Hertz | Karl F. Herzfeld | George de Hevesy | Antony Hewish | David Hilbert | Maurice Hilleman | Hipparchus | Hippocrates | Shintaro Hirase | Dorothy Hodgkin | Robert Hooke | Frederick Gowland Hopkins | William Hopkins | Grace Murray Hopper | Frank Hornby | Jack Horner | Bernardo Houssay | Fred Hoyle | Edwin Hubble | Alexander von Humboldt | Zora Neale Hurston | James Hutton | Christiaan Huygens | Hypatia

Ernesto Illy | Jan Ingenhousz | Ernst Ising | Keisuke Ito

Mae Carol Jemison | Edward Jenner | J. Hans D. Jensen | Irene Joliot-Curie | James Prescott Joule | Percy Lavon Julian

Michio Kaku | Heike Kamerlingh Onnes | Pyotr Kapitsa | Friedrich August Kekulé | Frances Kelsey | Pearl Kendrick | Johannes Kepler | Abdul Qadeer Khan | Omar Khayyam | Alfred Kinsey | Gustav Kirchoff | Martin Klaproth | Robert Koch | Emil Kraepelin | Thomas Kuhn | Stephanie Kwolek

Joseph-Louis Lagrange | Jean-Baptiste Lamarck | Hedy Lamarr | Edwin Herbert Land | Karl Landsteiner | Pierre-Simon Laplace | Max von Laue | Antoine Lavoisier | Ernest Lawrence | Henrietta Leavitt | Antonie van Leeuwenhoek | Inge Lehmann | Gottfried Leibniz | Georges Lemaître | Leonardo da Vinci | Niccolo Leoniceno | Aldo Leopold | Rita Levi-Montalcini | Claude Levi-Strauss | Willard Frank Libby | Justus von Liebig | Carolus Linnaeus | Joseph Lister | John Locke | Hendrik Antoon Lorentz | Konrad Lorenz | Ada Lovelace | Percival Lowell | Lucretius | Charles Lyell | Trofim Lysenko

Ernst Mach | Marcello Malpighi | Jane Marcet | Guglielmo Marconi | Lynn Margulis | Barry Marshall | Polly Matzinger | Matthew Maury | James Clerk Maxwell | Ernst Mayr | Barbara McClintock | Lise Meitner | Gregor Mendel | Dmitri Mendeleev | Franz Mesmer | Antonio Meucci | John Michell | Albert Abraham Michelson | Thomas Midgeley Jr. | Milutin Milankovic | Maria Mitchell | Mario Molina | Thomas Hunt Morgan | Samuel Morse | Henry Moseley

Ukichiro Nakaya | John Napier | Giulio Natta | John Needham | John von Neumann | Thomas Newcomen | Isaac Newton | Charles Nicolle | Florence Nightingale | Tim Noakes | Alfred Nobel | Emmy Noether | Christiane Nusslein-Volhard | Bill Nye

Hans Christian Oersted | Georg Ohm | J. Robert Oppenheimer | Wilhelm Ostwald | William Oughtred

Blaise Pascal | Louis Pasteur | Wolfgang Ernst Pauli | Linus Pauling | Randy Pausch | Ivan Pavlov | Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin | Wilder Penfield | Marguerite Perey | William Perkin | John Philoponus | Jean Piaget | Philippe Pinel | Max Planck | Pliny the Elder | Henri Poincaré | Karl Popper | Beatrix Potter | Joseph Priestley | Proclus | Claudius Ptolemy | Pythagoras

Adolphe Quetelet | Harriet Quimby | Thabit ibn Qurra

C. V. Raman | Srinivasa Ramanujan | William Ramsay | John Ray | Prafulla Chandra Ray | Francesco Redi | Sally Ride | Bernhard Riemann | Wilhelm Röntgen | Hermann Rorschach | Ronald Ross | Ibn Rushd | Ernest Rutherford

Carl Sagan | Abdus Salam | Jonas Salk | Frederick Sanger | Alberto Santos-Dumont | Walter Schottky | Erwin Schrödinger | Theodor Schwann | Glenn Seaborg | Hans Selye | Charles Sherrington | Gene Shoemaker | Ernst Werner von Siemens | George Gaylord Simpson | B. F. Skinner | William Smith | Frederick Soddy | Mary Somerville | Arnold Sommerfeld | Hermann Staudinger | Nicolas Steno | Nettie Stevens | William John Swainson | Leo Szilard

Niccolo Tartaglia | Edward Teller | Nikola Tesla | Thales of Miletus | Theon of Alexandria | Benjamin Thompson | J. J. Thomson | William Thomson | Henry David Thoreau | Kip S. Thorne | Clyde Tombaugh | Susumu Tonegawa | Evangelista Torricelli | Charles Townes | Youyou Tu | Alan Turing | Neil deGrasse Tyson

Harold Urey

Craig Venter | Vladimir Vernadsky | Andreas Vesalius | Rudolf Virchow | Artturi Virtanen | Alessandro Volta

Selman Waksman | George Wald | Alfred Russel Wallace | John Wallis | Ernest Walton | James Watson | James Watt | Alfred Wegener | John Archibald Wheeler | Maurice Wilkins | Thomas Willis | E. O. Wilson | Sven Wingqvist | Sergei Winogradsky | Carl Woese | Friedrich Wöhler | Wilbur and Orville Wright | Wilhelm Wundt

Chen-Ning Yang

Ahmed Zewail

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