Physics in the 2000s
Click here for summaries of research discoveries made by faculty in our department during this fertile and exciting decade.
2000
Richard Martin (Physics), with Duane Johnson (MatSE and Physics), secures funding from the National Science Foundation and IBM Corporation to establish the multidisciplinary Materials Computational Center in the MRL.
2001
Paul G. Kwiat is appointed the second John Bardeen Endowed Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Physics. A team led by Kwiat receives a $4.6-million grant from the NSF to investigate the foundations of solid-state quantum information processing.
The department initiates a novel "Senior Thesis" program for undergraduate researchers, which comprises three semesters of integrated research and instruction. The first course, Physics 496, "Introduction to Physics Research," is offered to students during the spring semester of their junior years. The students then undertake an independent research project during the summer and follow up with Physics 499, "Senior Thesis" during the fall semester of their senior years. Broad themes that are covered in the courses are "doing science" (documentation of research, intermediate reports and studies, proposals, reviewing), the ethical conduct of science (sharing credit, treatment of data, avoiding bias), communicating in science (publications, oral presentations, preparing figures and visual aids), and pursuing a physics career (research opportunities in various subdisciplines, applying to graduate school, nontraditional careers).
2002
Space is assigned to Physics in the six-floor "Engineering Sciences Building" to relieve some of the overcrowding in Loomis. After extensive remodeling, the condensed matter theorists and the upper-level teaching laboratories make the long trek north. The theorists are consoled in their northern exile by a state-of-the-art espresso machine.
2003
Professor of Physics
Anthony J. Leggett shares the
Nobel Prize in Physics with Alexei Abrikosov and Vitaly
Ginzburg "for pioneering contributions to the theory of superconductors and superfluids," a day after former
Slichter postdoc Sir Peter Mansfield
shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with
UI Professor Paul C. Lauterbur.
2004
Paul Selvin
and his student Ahmet Yildiz, in collaboration with colleagues from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the University of California,
San Francisco, show conclusively that kinesin, one of the most important molecular motors for moving cargo within the cell, moves with the
hand-over-hand motion of a mountain climber, rather than an inchworm-like motion.
2006
Dale Van Harlingen is named the 10th head of Physics, following Jeremiah Sullivan's retirement.
Klaus Schulten's group carries out the first atom-by-atom simulation of an entire life form, the satellite tobacco mosaic virus.
Paul Kwiat's group, using an optical-based quantum computer, demonstrate "counterfactual computation," determining the answer to an algorithm—without ever running the algorithm. (O. Hosten at al., Nature 439, 949 [2006]).
Check back often for more exciting discoveries and educational innovations at Physics Illinois.
