Roy J. Glauber, adjunct professor of optical sciences, has become the third UA College of Optical Sciences professor to win the Nobel Prize in physics.
"We're obviously very pleased to have yet another Nobel Prize awarded to someone in our department," said Richard Shoemaker, associate dean of the College of Optical Sciences.
The third Nobel Prize in physics to be awarded to a UA professor enhances the college's reputation and indicates that outstanding people are attracted to come and work with the UA, Shoemaker said.
Glauber became a UA adjunct professor in 1988 but has worked with the college since the early 1970s, said James C. Wyant, dean of the College of Optical Sciences.
"We're honored to have Glauber associated with our college," Wyant said.
Glauber is "the father of modern optics," and he should have won the Nobel Prize many years ago, Wyant said.
Glauber, the Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics at Harvard University, is being honored by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences "for his contribution to the quantum theory of optical coherence," research in quantum optics that he performed at Harvard in the 1960s.
He shares the prize with John L. Hall from the University of Colorado and Theodor W. Hansch from the Institute for Quantum Optics in Munich, Germany, but Glauber will receive half of the $1.3 million prize, with Hansch and Hall splitting the other half.
In 1955, Willis Lamb, UA professor of optical sciences and physics, won the Nobel Prize in physics. UA professor of optical sciences Nicolaas Bloembergen won the prize in 1981.