Professor Klapwijk receives prestigious prize for superconductivity experiments
FOM workgroup leader Prof.dr.ir.
Teun Klapwijk (Kavli Institute of Nanoscience, Delft University of Technology)
will receive the 2012 Heike Kamerlingh Onnes prize for superconductivity
experiments. The prize, regarded as one of the most prestigious in the field,
is awarded every three years for outstanding experiments that illuminate the
nature of superconductivity.
The Heike Kamerlingh Onnes prizeis shared with Øystein Fisher (University of Geneva) and Herbert Mook (OakRidge National Laboratory). It will be presented to Klapwijk at the 2012International Conference on Materials and Mechanisms of Superconductivity (July29th-August 3rd) in Washington DC.
Klapwijk was cited for 'seminalexperiments on the superconducting properties of superconductor-ferromagnet andsuperconductor-normal metal nanostructures'. Klapwijk has been active in thefield of superconductivity for many years. His most recent discovery was thepenetration of superconductivity into a ferromagnet.
Prior to that, he worked onsuperconductor-semiconductor systems as well as on an important theoreticalmodel, the Blonder-Tinkham-Klapwijk-theory (BTK-theory). Thanks to this model,scientists can identify the superconducting properties of a new materialthrough experiments in a relatively easy and quick manner. Klapwijk is alsoknown for his contributions to the Herschel Space Telescope and ALMA, where thepower of superconductivity is used for experimental astronomy.
The prize was established in 1999and is named after the Dutch scientist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes (1853-1926),winner of the 1913 Nobel Prize in Physics, for the discovery ofsuperconductivity and related low-temperature research. Since the discovery ofsuperconductivity, the phenomenon has been used widely in scientific research,including astronomy, quantum mechanical research and electronics. But it isalso used in 'every day' applications, most notably in MRI-scanners.