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Donald Glaser, a Nobel-prize winning physicist who reinvented himself as a biotech pioneer and later dove into the field of neurobiology, died in his sleep Thursday morning, Feb. 28, at his home in Berkeley. Glaser, a professor emeritus of physics and of molecular and cell biology, was 86.
Tag: physics
Carlos Bustamante honored with Vilcek Prize
February 15, 2012:
Carlos Bustamante, a professor of molecular and cell biology and of physics and chemistry, has been awarded the 2012 Vilcek Prize, given annually to individuals born abroad who have made lasting contributions to American society. Born in Peru, Bustamante uses magnetic beads, atomic-force microscopes and laser “tweezers” to explore the inner workings of the cell and DNA.
Physicist Hitoshi Murayama to direct new Kavli institute at Univ. of Tokyo
February 8, 2012:
The Kavli Foundation endowed a new Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe at the University of Tokyo to be directed by theoretical physicist Hitoshi Murayama. While maintaining his position as UC Berkeley professor of physics, Murayama will guide institute research into cosmological questions such as how the universe began, how it will end and what laws govern it.
For Chancellor Birgeneau, research is for life
February 6, 2012:
Throughout his tenure as UC Berkeley chancellor, Robert Birgeneau has sustained a research interest in new materials, maintaining labs both on campus and at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Upon his recent receipt of the Shull Prize from the Neutron Scattering Society of America, Birgeneau reflected on the role research has played in his life at Berkeley.
Berkeley 2011 — the year in pictures
December 22, 2011:
Beyond the protests, the story — as always — is one of engagement, passion and perseverance in the face of challenges, whether institutional or personal.
Disaster looms for gas cloud falling into Milky Way’s central black hole
December 14, 2011:
Astronomers led by UC Berkeley’s Reinhard Genzel, also of the Max Planck Institute in Germany, have observed a cloud of gas several times the mass of Earth approaching the 4.3 million solar-mass black hole at the center of the Milky Way. Theorist Eliot Quataert calculates that the cloud will not survive the encounter, but will be heated and shredded in 2013.
Saul Perlmutter receives Nobel Prize in Stockholm
December 13, 2011:
Saul Perlmutter, UC Berkeley and Berkeley Lab physicist, was feted in Stockholm, Sweden, last week before receiving his Nobel Prize medal on Saturday, Dec. 10, during a ceremony at the Stockholm Concert Hall. Perlmutter shared the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics with Brian Schmidt and Adam Riess.
Perlmutter, Filippenko in NOVA special
November 2, 2011:
Newly minted Nobel Laureate Saul Perlmutter is among the physicists and astronomers interviewed in the premier episode of a four-part NOVA series, “The Fabric of the Cosmos,” which airs tonight on PBS stations around the country. In the San Francisco Bay Area, the one-hour episode can be viewed on KQED-TV at 9 p.m.
Berkeley team confirms reality of global warming
October 20, 2011:
Physicist Richard Muller and a team of Berkeley statisticians, physicists and climatologists began a project earlier this year to reanalyze 1.6 billion temperature records, some dating back to 1800, to address some of the concerns of climate change skeptics. Their conclusions confirm that global warming is real.
Richard Muller among The Atlantic’s “Brave Thinkers”
October 11, 2011:
The Atlantic magazine’s annual list of “Brave Thinkers” includes not only Barack Obama and Steve Jobs, but UC Berkeley physicist Richard Muller. He is lauded as a scientist who, “suspicious of manipulated climate-change data, bucks expectations and presents the evidence for man-made global warming.”
For Berkeley physicist, worldwide fame and campus parking
October 4, 2011:
For Berkeley physicist Saul Perlmutter, Tuesday, Oct. 4 began before 3 a.m. with a press call from Sweden, and soon a meaningful moment with his sleepy but excited 8-year-old. Then — quickly and inevitably — came the deluge of phone calls and e-mails, celebratory events and photo ops. And, it goes without saying, a coveted parking pass.
Saul Perlmutter awarded 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics
October 4, 2011:
Saul Perlmutter, UC Berkeley professor of physics and LBNL senior scientist, will share the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics with two other scientists, including former UC Berkeley postdoc Adam Riess, for their discovery that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. This discovery in 1998 led to the realization that the universe is largely composed of an enigmatic “dark energy.”
Using neutrinos to probe Earth’s hot core
July 18, 2011:
UC Berkeley and Berkeley Lab physicists are part of a large international collaboration, called KamLAND, that used a neutrino detector in Japan to learn about the sources of heat in Earth’s interior. According to Stuart Freedman, the results indicate that only half the heat comes from radioactive decay; the rest from other processes.
Magnetic memory and logic could achieve ultimate energy efficiency
July 1, 2011:
Information theory dictates that a logical operation in a computer must consume a minimum amount of energy. Today’s computers consume a million times more energy per operation than this limit, but magnetic computers with no moving electrons could theoretically operate at the minimum energy, called the Landauer limit, according to UC Berkeley electrical engineers.
CERN group traps antihydrogen for more than 16 minutes
June 5, 2011:
The ALPHA experiment at CERN in Geneva has successfully trapped rare antihydrogen atoms for 1,000 seconds, or more than 16 minutes. This is long enough to start experimenting for the first time on antimatter atoms to determine whether they act like normal matter.
Graphene nanoribbons exhibit cool edge effects
May 9, 2011:
Michael Crommie and physicists at UC Berkeley, Berkeley Lab and Stanford have for the first time measured the electronic properties at the edges of graphene ribbons, confirming unique effects that make nanoribbons promising electronic devices.
If plants generate magnetic fields, they’re not sayin’
April 7, 2011:
UC Berkeley physicists are using some of the world’s most sensitive magnetic field detectors to determine whether plants, like animals, produce magnetic fields.
Ground-based lasers vie with satellites to map Earth’s magnetic field
February 14, 2011:
Oil and mineral companies, climatologists and geophysicists all rely on expensive satellites to measure the Earth’s magnetic field, but there may be a cheaper option. UC Berkeley physicist Dmitry Budker proposes shining a pulsed orange laser on the layer of sodium atoms 90 km above the Earth to directly read the local magnetic field.
Antihydrogen advances named Breakthrough of the Year
December 20, 2010:
The magazine Physics World named the trapping of antihydrogen by a team that included UC Berkeley physicists the 2010 Breakthrough of the Year. The ALPHA team shared the honor with another team that successfully focused a beam of antihydrogen atoms at CERN.
New book will make you an instant physicist (maybe)
December 20, 2010:
UC Berkeley physicist Richard Muller has published a new book, “The Instant Physicist: An Illustrated Guide,” replete with fun physics facts and accompanied by witty cartoons by illustrator Joey Manfre.
Antihydrogen trapped for first time
November 17, 2010:
The particle accelerators at CERN in Geneva produce scads of antiprotons, which five years ago were combined at high speed with positrons to create for the first time antimatter atoms: antihydrogen. Those atoms annihilated with normal matter within microseconds, but an international team involving UC Berkeley and LBNL physicists has succeeded in slowing such atoms down and trapping them for a tenth of a second.
Novel metamaterial vastly improves quality of ultrasound imaging
November 5, 2010:
New “metamaterials” can overcome some of the limitations of microscopes and imagers, including ultrasound imagers. Researchers in the Nano-scale Science & Engineering Center have come up with a metamaterial to improve the picture quality of ultrasound by a factor of 50.
Graphene exhibits bizarre new behavior well-suited to electronic devices
July 29, 2010:
Graphene, a sheet of pure carbon heralded as a possible replacement for silicon-based semiconductors, has been found to have a unique and amazing property that could make it even more suitable for future electronic devices.
Experiment tests underpinnings of quantum field theory, Bose-Einstein statistics of photons
June 24, 2010:
The world of elementary particles is divided between bosons, such as photons, and fermions, including electrons and neutrinos. Fermions and bosons play by separate rules, which makes chemistry possible as well as superconductivity. But do bosons sometimes play by fermion rules? Two UC Berkeley physicists asked that question, and found — so far — that the answer is, no.
Most precise test yet of Einstein’s gravitational redshift
February 17, 2010:
Using an atom interferometer, UC Berkeley scientists have tested one of the foundations of Einstein’s general theory of relativity: that time slows down in a gravitational field. Their experiment proves Einstein correct with 10,000 times more precision than previous experiments.
