This week, Peter Zoller will be presented with the 2018 Willis Lamb Award for Laser Physics and Quantum Optics. The award ceremony will take place on Wednesday as part of the Winter Colloquium at the Physics of Quantum Electronics Conference in Snowbird, Utah. Together with Peter Zoller, Jian-Wei Pan and Ernst Rasel are also honoured.
The award is named after the American Nobel laureate Willis Eugene Lamb, Jr. who has laid the foundations in numerous fields of physics and technology. Among the previous awardees are numerous outstanding personalities in physics. Last year, for example, Rainer Weiss from MIT received this prize, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in December in Stockholm for his joint discovery of gravitational waves. Peter Zoller is awarded for his groundbreaking work in the field of quantum optics and quantum information.
About the person
Peter Zoller is considered to be one of the most influential scientists in the field of quantum optics. With his groundbreaking discoveries and developments, he has combined quantum optics with various other fields of physics, opening up new avenues for the development of future quantum technologies. His pioneering work is driving the development of quantum simulators and quantum computers. Peter Zoller has already received many awards for his research, including the Herbert Walther Prize (2016), the Wolf Prize (2013), the Benjamin Franklin Medal (2010) and the Max Planck Medal (2005). Peter Zoller is Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Innsbruck and Scientific Director at the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.