William Phillips

Dr. William Daniel Phillips shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to laser cooling, a technique to slow the movement of gaseous atoms in order to better study them. He was the valedictorian of his high school class in rural Pennsylvania, went on to graduate summa cum laude from college, and after that earned his physics doctorate from MIT. Phillips studied and advanced the scientific art of supercooling atoms for trapping and examination. Cooling slows the speed of atoms' movements, and extreme cooling to near absolute zero allows the atomic structure of gases to be slowed and trapped without having the gas condense and liquefy or solidify. Working with the laser-based "atom trap" designed by Steven Chu but modifying its parameters, Phillips was able to obtain temperatures even lower than those predicted and achieved by Chu's team. Phillips' results were so remarkable and far beyond what physicists thought would be feasible, he said that he could not believe it. Phillips later earned the Noble Prize in Physics, with Steven Chu and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, for his contributions to laser cooling (and especially for his invention of the Zeeman slower) at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (where he has worked his entire career). He is also a professor of physics at the University of Maryland. Dr. William Phillips participated in the 1999 Achievement Summit in Washington, D.C. and spoke to the student delegates about his life experiences as a scientist.