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Penn State Eberly College of Science
August 20, 1998
Jain Named First Erwin W. Mueller Professor of Physics
Jainendra K. Jain has been named Penn State's first Erwin W. Mueller Professor of Physics.
Jain, who joins the Penn State faculty in the fall of 1998, is a condensed-matter theorist who is interested in the physics of low-dimensional systems, especially those states in which electrons behave in unexpected ways. The major focus of his research has been in the field of the "quantum Hall effect," which is a phenomenon that concerns the state of electrons at the interface of two semiconductor materials exposed to a strong magnetic field.
Jain earned his bachelor's degree from Rajasthan University in India in 1979, his master's degree from the Indian Institute of Technology in 1981, and his doctoral degree from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Stony Brook in 1985. Jain was a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Maryland from 1986 to 1988 and an associate research scientist at Yale University from 1988 to 1989. He joined SUNY at Stony Brook as an assistant professor in 1989, was promoted to associate professor in 1993, and to professor in 1997.
The Erwin W. Mueller Professorship, supported by alumni gifts, was created in 1995 to help Penn State attract and retain a physicist held in the highest regard by contemporaries in the field. Mueller, who was a member of the Penn State physics faculty from 1952 to 1977, was the first person to "see" an ion, using a field ion microscope of his own invention. The financial support provided by the endowed professorship will allow its holder to provide leadership in research and in training future physicists at Penn State.
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