Nobel Nobel

Highest scientific honour in a pair

Usually rather rare, but for MPQ since last autumn the status quo: two Nobel Prizes in less than twenty years – in the comparatively short institute history of only 45 years. Not many research institutions this size around the globe can say the same. That’s why two of these special emblems from now on will shine proudly on the driveway to the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics – signs of scientific success that speak for themselves.

Here is a brief summary of what it was all about: The first Nobel Prize was awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy in 2005 to Professor Theodor Hänsch for the development of the optical frequency comb. The instrument is sometimes popularly called a laser ruler because it emits light across a broad spectrum at certain discrete frequencies, somewhat similar to the counters on a ruler. Theodor Hänsch and his group developed the instrument at the MPQ in 1998. Over the years it has made its way into thousands of laboratories around the world and established itself as a standard tool for precision measurement. The frequency comb made it possible to measure certain frequencies of electromagnetic radiation, such as visible light, with unprecedented accuracy. This ground-breaking invention has, for example, enabled the use of optical atomic clocks that could make our satellite navigation even more accurate in the future.

The second Nobel Prize - a recent event - came as a surprise to Prof. Ferenc Krausz and the MPQ on 3 October 2023, the Institute's Open Day. As more than a thousand visitors wandered the Institute's corridors, trying out experiments and immersing themselves in the matters of quantum and laser physics, the news of the day suddenly arrived. A Nobel Prize for the attosecond and one of its co-founders: Ferenc Krausz, who on the day of the days happened to be taking part in the Open Day programme and who without further ado shared exciting insights into his freshly awarded research in a public lecture. In the early 2000s, the attosecond - a billionth of a billionth of a second - provided the key to a previously hidden world: the world of electrons. Ultrafast attosecond flashes of light made it possible for the first time to 'visualise', measure and study electronic motion in atoms and molecules - with far-reaching consequences for science and technology. The applications of this new science are, and will continue to be, manifold and revolutionary, from completely new insights into the basic science of matter, to ever faster electronics, to radically new possibilities in medical laser diagnostics.

All of this of course is familiar to the scientific community and everyone who is interested in physics and this kind of science. Since last week, the two Nobel Prize medals have finally been shining on the pylons of the MPQ, drawing the attention of passers-by to the great scientific progress that has been made just a few hundred metres away. And if you follow the Garching Walk of Fame a little further, you will find the next Nobel Prize medal at the Max Planck Institute of Extraterrestrial Physics, awarded to Professor Reinhard Genzel in 2020. Our little Garching Research Campus truly is something special in Germany.