[ Picture of Willis Lamb ]  [ Picture of Lamb Award ] 

The Willis E. Lamb Award for Laser Science and Quantum Optics

The Willis E. Lamb Award for Laser Science and Quantum Optics is presented annually for outstanding contributions to the field. The award honors Willis E. Lamb, Jr., famous laser scientist and 1955 winner of the Nobel Prize in physics, who gave us many seminal insights and served as our guide in so many areas of physics and technology.

The 2024 winners were: The award was presented at PQE-2024 on January 10, 2024.

The award is sponsored by the Physics of Quantum Electronics (PQE) conference and presented at its Winter Colloquium in Snowbird, Utah. This conference, now in its 54th year, attracts researchers in laser physics and quantum electronics from around the globe.

Previous winners of the award are:

  2024:   Vanderlei Bagnato, Carmen Menoni, Da-Wei Wang.
  2023:   Christoph Keitel, Franco Nori, Eric Van Stryland.
  2022:   Dana Z. Anderson, Yoshihisa Yamamoto, Renbao Liu.
  2020:   Stephen E. Harris, Christopher R. Monroe, Alexi V. Sokolov.
  2019:   Paul Corkum, Don Page, William Unruh.
  2018:   Jian-Wei Pan, Ernst Rasel, Peter Zoller.
  2017:   Naomi Halas, Mikhail Lukin, Rainer Weiss.
  2016:   Robin Côté, Maciej Lewenstein, John Madey, Anton Zeilinger.
  2015:   Hui Cao, Douglas Stone, and Vladislav Yakovlev.
  2014:   Pierre Meystre, Shi-Yao Zhu, and M. Suhail Zubairy.
  2013:   Shaul Mukamel, Peter Nordlander, and Susanne Yelin.
  2012:   Henry C. Kapteyn, Margaret M. Murnane, and Jorge G. Rocca.
  2011:   Ron Folman, Randall G. Hulet, and Mark A Kasevich.
  2010:   John B. Pendry, Vladimir M. Shalaev, and Aleksei M. Zheltikov.
  2009:   Robert W. Boyd, Robert L. Byer, and Norbert Kroó.
  2008:   Gershon Kurizki, Mark Raizen, and Wolfgang Schleich.
  2007:   Hans Frauenfelder, Moshe Shapiro, and Sunney Xie.
  2006:   Raymond Chiao, Roy Glauber, and Manfred Kleber.
  2005:   Gérard Mourou, Szymon Suckewer, and Sune Svanberg.
  2004:   Karl Kompa, Stuart Rice, and Lu Sham.
  2003:   Leon Cohen, Michael Feld, and Herschel Rabitz.
  2002:   Jonathan Dowling, Luigi Lugiato, and Yanhua Shih.
  2001:   James Gordon and Herman Haus.
  2000:   Federico Capasso and Alfred Y. Cho
  1999:   Melvin Lax, Lorenzo Narducci, and Herbert Walther.
  1998:   Ali Javan, Olga Kocharovskaya, and Paul Mandel.
    (Inaugural Year Photo)