At a ceremony in Riyadh, Saudia Arabia, this month, the King Faisal Foundation will present three physicists with the 2005 King Faisal Science Prize (Physics). Federico Capasso, Frank Wilczek, and Anton Zeilinger will split the cash endowment of 750 000 riyals ($200 000), and each will receive a certificate handwritten in Diwani calligraphy and a commemorative gold medal.
The Robert L. Wallace Professor of Applied Physics at Harvard University, Capasso was praised by the foundation as “one of the most creative and influential physicists in the world,” The citation acknowledges his international reuptation for having designed and demonstrated the quantum cascade laser. This lasing technique, “perhaps the most important development in laser physics during the last decade, signifies an imaginative breakthrough in this field” that enables “a remarkable contribution of excellent solid-state science and laser physics with new solid-state technology.”
Wilczek, Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics at MIT, is...
