Theodor W. Hänsch, Date of Birth, Place of Birth

    

Theodor W. Hänsch

German physicist and nobel laureate

Date of Birth: 30-Oct-1941

Place of Birth: Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany

Profession: physicist, university teacher

Nationality: United States, Germany

Zodiac Sign: Scorpio


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About Theodor W. Hänsch

  • Theodor Wolfgang Hänsch (born 30 October 1941) is a German physicist.
  • He received one fourth of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics for "contributions to the development of laser-based precision spectroscopy, including the optical frequency comb technique", sharing the prize with John L.
  • Hall and Roy J.
  • Glauber. Hänsch is Director of the Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik (quantum optics) and Professor of experimental physics and laser spectroscopy at the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. Hänsch received his secondary education at Helmholtz-Gymnasium Heidelberg and gained his Diplom and doctoral degree from Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg in the 1960s.
  • Subsequently, he became a professor at Stanford University, California from 1975 to 1986.
  • He was awarded the Comstock Prize in Physics from the National Academy of Sciences in 1983.
  • In 1986, he received the Albert A.
  • Michelson Medal from the Franklin Institute.
  • In the same year Hänsch returned to Germany to head the Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik.
  • In 1989, he received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, which is the highest honour awarded in German research.
  • In 2005, he also received the Otto Hahn Award of the City of Frankfurt am Main, the Society of German Chemists and the German Physical Society.
  • In that same year, the Optical Society of America awarded him the Frederic Ives Medal and the status of honorary member in 2008. One of his students, Carl E.
  • Wieman, received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2001. In 1970 he invented a new type of laser which generated light pulses with an extremely high spectral resolution (i.e.
  • all the photons emitted from the laser had nearly the same energy, to a precision of 1 part in a million).
  • Using this device he succeeded to measure the transition frequency of the Balmer line of atomic hydrogen with a much higher precision than before.
  • During the late 1990s, he and his coworkers developed a new method to measure the frequency of laser light to an even higher precision, using a device called the optical frequency comb generator.
  • This invention was then used to measure the Lyman line of atomic hydrogen to an extraordinary precision of 1 part in a hundred trillion.
  • At such a high precision, it became possible to search for possible changes in the fundamental physical constants of the universe over time.
  • For these achievements he became co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2005.

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