Physicist Wins MacArthur ‘Genius Grant’

Lene Hau, McKay professor of applied physics and professor of physics, received a MacArthur Fellowship yesterday for her work on manipulating light. The “genius grant” entitles her to receive $500,000 over a period of five years, which she can spend as she pleases.

“[When I got the call] the program director asked if I was sitting down,” Hau said. “Luckily, I was.”

“It took me several hours after I heard the news for it to sink in. It is such a tremendous honor,” she said.

The MacArthur Foundation does not interview nominees, and the winners are notified only when the final decision is made.

Hau’s colleagues said they were thrilled to hear of her award.

“I was really, really excited,” said Venkatesh Narayanamurti, dean of engineering and applied sciences. “It’s a very nice prize. It’s really reserved for unusual people.”

Hau received a Ph.D from the University of Aarhus, Denmark in 1991 and worked at the Rowland Institute before moving to Harvard in 1999.

For the past few years, she has led a research team which worked on slowing light to a stop by using atoms cooled to several billionths of a degree above absolute zero.

Usually, any information contained in a light beam is destroyed when its photons are absorbed by atoms. In Hau’s research, the information is preserved, and can be converted back into a light beam through the use of lasers.

This “storage” process does not effect the properties of the light beam, making it potentially invaluable in processing and storing optical information.

“It’s very early in the field, but I certainly hope that [the research] will turn out to be very important,” Hau said.

Although Hau’s graduate training focused on the theoretical aspects of physics, some of her most recent projects have involved practical application.

She has been experimenting in nanotechnology, trying to take “a lab full of optics and optical gizmos, and squeeze it onto a chip.”

She has recently been in discussion with the Danish photonics company NKT about other possible uses for her research.

When asked what she would do with the money, Hau said it was still too early to tell.

“I’d like to keep moving into the most exciting new field. That’s quite difficult with traditional funding,” she said.

Hau has not ruled out the idea of a sabbatical, but is quick to praise Harvard and her students.

“Optics is really great at Harvard, and one of the great rewards here is the students,” she said.

The MacArthur Foundation would not reveal any information about the decision-making process that selected Hau.

“As a rule we don’t talk about the specific reason why a winner is chosen,” said Daniel Socolow, the director of the fellows program.

“[Candidates] must show exceptional creativity and have great potential. The fellowship must also really make a difference in leveraging that potential.”

The MacArthur Foundation is a private, independent grant-making institution dedicated to helping groups and individuals foster lasting improvement in the human condition.

Other recipients this year included a concert pianist, a papyrologist, and several other artists and scientists.

In the past two years, Harvard’s Loeb Associate Professor of the Natural Sciences Daniel P. Schrag and Professor of Physics Juan M. Maldacena both received fellowships.