NWO Spinoza Prize 2014 for Prof.dr. Dirk Bouwmeester
This was announced today by Jos Engelen, chair of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). The yearly prizes are a personal accolade to top scientists working in the Netherlands. This year NWO awarded the NWO Spinoza Prize for the twentieth time.
Leading physicist
Dirk Bouwmeester is Professor of Physics at Leiden University, FOM workgroup leader, and is also a professor at the University of Santa Barbara in California. As an experimental physicist, Bouwmeester studies and tests the boundaries of the quantum mechanical world and the 'classical' world and investigates whether there is actually a boundary between the two. And if there is, what characterises that boundary. The laws of quantum mechanics only appear to apply to the very smallest particles such as photons, electrons, atoms and molecules. For all larger objects, the classical laws of physics apply. Bouwmeester tests whether he can nevertheless bring larger objects into a quantum mechanical state: where a particle can be in two opposite states at once, for example.
New experimental method
In 2003, in collaboration with Professor Roger Penrose, Bouwmeester introduced a radical new method to experiment with the quantum mechanical properties of relatively large objects. Then in 2006 he demonstrated that a crucial technique for these experiments, namely the supercooling of an object with light, was possible. These supercooled experiments on mechanical systems have now been adopted by research groups worldwide and have ignited a race to test the quantum mechanics of relatively large objects.
Contributions to breakthroughs in physics
Bouwmeester's research has led to breakthroughs in physics on several occasions. For example in 1997, when he was a researcher in Innsbruck under professor Anton Zeilinger, he contributed to experimental research deemed worthy of a Nobel Prize: the first experimental evidence for quantum teleportation in which a particle assumes the properties of a different particle without having any contact with it. Bouwmeester has also done research into new forms of light: light that does not have the form of a wave but of a circle. These circles are connected and interwoven with each other and can form knots: he recently demonstrated that such knots of fields are also possible for plasma and for gravitational waves. Bouwmeester's current research includes artificial atoms in semiconductors, with possible applications in quantum informatics, and silver nanoclusters with optical properties inserted in DNA, which have possible medical applications.
Bouwmeester did his degree and PhD in Leiden and after periods at the universities of Oxford and Innsbruck he became a Professor at the University of Santa Barbara in California. Bouwmeester returned to Leiden with a European Marie Curie Excellence Grant of two million euros, intended for setting up a transnational research group in Europe. Bouwmeester is currently professor at both Leiden University and the University of Santa Barbara. He combines the expertise of both research groups: experiments at extremely low temperatures and nanotechnology. Bouwmeester works closely with colleagues and specialised companies to develop the instruments he needs for his research. Bouwmeester wants to disseminate his knowledge to a wider public: for example, he participates in school projects and he also took part in a two-day meeting between physics and Buddhism with the Dalai Lama.
The other recipients of Spinoza Prizes were archaeologist Corinne Hofman, environmental technologist Mark van Loosdrecht and migratory bird ecologist Theunis Piersma.
Please see the NWO website for more information.