Professor Theodor Hänsch is appointed Honorary Professor in Xi'an, China
In a festive ceremony Prof. Hänsch has been appointed Honorary Professor at Northwestern Polytechnical University.
In a festive ceremony on April 28, 2014, Professor Theodor W. Hänsch, Director at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ) in Garching, has been appointed Honorary Professor at Northwestern Polytechnical University (NPU) in Xi’an, Shaanxi, China. The ancient capital of Xi’an has become one of the fastest growing cities in inland China. NPU is a National Key University, directed by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People's Republic of China. The university emphasizes education and research in aeronautical, astronautical and marine engineering. It has more than 1 300 full and associate professors and about 30 000 students, including 3 000 full-time PhD candidates and 170 international students.
Professor Hänsch joins seven Honorary Professors, who have been appointed previously at NPU, including the Nobel Laureates Harry Kroto, Tsung-Dao Lee, Hartmut Michel, and Dan Shechtman. He received his Certificate of Appointment from President Wang Jinsong before giving a lecture on “Adventures in Laser Spectroscopy” to students and faculty.
Since 1986, Professor Theodor Hänsch has been Director of the Laser Spectroscopy Division at the MPQ and Professor of Physics at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. In 2005, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in precision laser spectroscopy, including the frequency comb technique. Since 2006, his research has been supported by the Max Planck Foundation and the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Foundation.