{"id":67276,"date":"2012-10-17T09:34:42","date_gmt":"2012-10-17T13:34:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=67276"},"modified":"2012-10-22T08:10:23","modified_gmt":"2012-10-22T12:10:23","slug":"nobel-prize-winner-roy-glauber-speaks-at-annual-katzenstein-distinguished-lecture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2012\/10\/nobel-prize-winner-roy-glauber-speaks-at-annual-katzenstein-distinguished-lecture\/","title":{"rendered":"Nobel Prize Winner Roy Glauber Speaks at Annual Katzenstein Distinguished Lecture"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Nobel<\/a>
Nobel Prize winner Roy Glauber of Harvard spoke at UConn\u00a0 about his work on quantum optics. (John Babina for UConn)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Roy Glauber, winner of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics and professor of physics at Harvard University, spoke at the 15th<\/sup> annual Katzenstein Distinguished Lecture at UConn on Friday Oct. 12.<\/p>\n

The lectureship brings a Nobel Prize-winning physicist to campus each year to give a public lecture about his or her work and to receive the Katzenstein Prize in Physics.<\/p>\n

Glauber\u2019s Nobel-winning work relates to understanding quantum optics, or the interactions of light with matter at a quantum level. His 2005 Nobel prize, shared with John L. Hall and Theodor H\u00e4nsch, explained the fundamental properties of different types of light, such as those coming from a light bulb or a laser. Many of his theories are widely used today in the field of quantum optics.<\/p>\n

Tony Le, president of the Physics Club and a fourth-year physics major, said that having a Nobel winner visit UConn each year is an incomparable experience for undergraduates.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can learn so much from them and their work, and then they come to campus and you get to meet them,\u201d he said. \u201cYou see them face-to-face and you realize they\u2019re normal people.\u201d To realize that brilliant scientists are approachable makes studying physics that much more exciting, he said.<\/p>\n

Glauber\u2019s talk reviewed the history of quantum optics, touching on the popular notion that within quantum mechanics, an atom can be in two places as once.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is what we teach to freshmen, but it\u2019s not quite true,\u201d he explained, saying that in actuality, it\u2019s impossible to predict where an atom is at any given moment. \u201cWe\u2019ve had many years of these dilemmas and contradictions, and it started with Max Planck in 1900,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Glauber also spoke about his recent work in \u201cghost imaging,\u201d in which a high-resolution camera can take a photo of something it can\u2019t see by bouncing photons off the object.<\/p>\n

\u201cGlauber is really the father of quantum optics,\u201d said Physics Professor Robin Cote, who hosted the talk. He also noted that, as a testament to Glauber\u2019s sense of humor, he regularly wears a pointy hat and \u201csweeps\u201d the stage clear of paper airplanes at Harvard\u2019s annual Ig Nobel Awards<\/a> for unusual and silly research.<\/p>\n

The Katzenstein Distinguished lecture series is made possible by an endowment established in 1996 by Henry S. Katzenstein, who earned the first Ph.D. awarded by UConn\u2019s Department of Physics in 1954. Katzenstein went on to found a company, now called Conexant Systems, that produces digital-analog converters and today has 3,000 employees.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople often ask, what can you do with a degree in physics?\u201d said Professor Douglas<\/p>\n

\"Glauber<\/a>
Glauber spoke to a crowd of physicists, mathematicians, engineers, students, alumni, and the public. (Christine Buckley\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Hamilton, department head in physics. \u201cEvery iPod, every iPhone, every hearing aid has a digital signal that must be converted into an analog signal in order to be used,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Kalum Palandage, a 2010 Ph.D. graduate of the physics department and native of Sri Lanka, has been attending the Katzenstein lectures for nine years, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s good for the public because they try to make it simple, and you always learn something new,\u201d he said. Even as a professor of physics at Trinity College in Hartford, he said the lectures always teach him something.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot everyone gets a chance to see a Nobel Prize winner speak in their lives,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s great that they have this lecture at UConn.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nobel Prize winning physicist Roy Glauber spoke to a packed house of academics, alumni, and members of the general public when he appeared at UConn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":67350,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[63],"class_list":["post-67276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-09 06:33:57","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67276"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67616,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67276\/revisions\/67616"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/67350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67276"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=67276"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=67276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}