Public Interest Lecture:  8:00 pm, Tuesday, July 13, 2010 

(Auditorium #2, Life Sciences Institute, University of British Columbia)

Catching Electrons with Light?

 

Paul Corkum

Steacie Institute for Molecular Sciences, National Research Council, Ottawa, Canada

Paul Corkum

Paul Corkum (OC, FRS, FRSC) received his Ph. D. from Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pa.  In 1973 he joined the staff of the National Research Council of Canada.  At NRC he concentrated first on laser technology and then on using intense laser pulses to study and control matter.  Paul is best known for introducing many of the concepts of how intense light pulses interact with atoms and molecules and then confirming them experimentally. He was the first to show how to make and measure attosecond pulses and how this new technology could be used to image atomic scale matter.  

Paul holds the Canada Research Chair of Attosecond Photonics at the University of Ottawa and serves as director of the Joint Attosecond Science Laboratory (JASLab).  He is a member of the Royal Societies of London and of Canada, an Officer of the Order of Canada, and a member of the US National Academy of Science.  Among his awards are the Canadian Association of Physicists’ Gold Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Physics (1996), the Royal Society of Canada’s Tory award (2003), the Optical Society’s Charles H. Townes award (2005), the IEEE’s Quantum Electronics Award (2005), the American Physical Societies’ Schawlow prize (2006), and the American Chemical Societies Zewail Prize (2009).  In 2008 he received the NSERC’s Herzberg Award, Canada’s Highest Scientific Prize.

The abstract for the lecture to be presented by Dr. Corkum can be found here.

For more information on this public lecture, please contact Dr. David Jones, Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of British Columbia (1-604-822-3853).