Book Bill Phillips

William Daniel "Bill" Phillips is an American physicist and Nobel laureate whose work on slowing and cooling atoms with laser light helped open an entire field of modern physics. In 1997 he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Steven Chu and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji for advances in laser cooling, including his invention of the Zeeman slower, research carried out at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, he graduated summa cum laude from Juniata College in 1970, earned his physics doctorate at MIT and joined the National Bureau of Standards, now NIST, in 1978. He also teaches physics at the University of Maryland, College Park, and has held affiliations with The Catholic University of America and the University of Queensland. His honors include the Albert A. Michelson Medal (1996), the Arthur L. Schawlow Prize in Laser Science (1998), the Richtmyer Memorial Lecture Award (2000), the Moyal Medal (2010) and the Arthur S. Flemming Award, along with fellowships in the American Physical Society, the Optical Society and the AAAS. As a speaker, Phillips makes cutting-edge quantum science accessible, engaging and full of curiosity.