At a special meeting of the Knesset next month, Israeli President Moshe Katsav will present the 2005 Wolf Prizes. Daniel Kleppner will receive the physics prize, Richard Zare will receive the chemistry prize, and Gregory Margulis and Sergei Novikov will split the mathematics prize.
The Lester Wolfe Professor of Physics at MIT, Kleppner is being recognized for “groundbreaking work in atomic physics of hydrogenic systems, including research on the hydrogen maser, Rydberg atoms, and Bose–Einstein condensation,” according to the citation. “Over the last 45 years,” the prize jury adds, he “has made fundamental contributions to atomic physics and quantum optics, mainly using hydrogen and hydrogen-like atoms. He built new devices, performed spectroscopic tests of extreme precision, and investigated novel quantum phenomena.” Among the contributions highlighted by the foundation are the development by Kleppner and Norman Ramsey of the hydrogen maser in 1960 and the Bose–Einstein condensation of hydrogen, achieved in...
