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Steven Chu

Steven Chu, an American physicist, is shown wearing glasses and a dark jacket over a collared shirt, set against a black background.

American physicist who developed laser cooling and trapping of neutral atoms at Bell Labs in the mid-1980s, slowing thermal atoms to micro-kelvin temperatures by pelting them with detuned photons. He shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics with Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and William D. Phillips, and later served as US Secretary of Energy. The technique made caesium fountain clocks possible.

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