Nobel Laureate to Present Marker Lectures in the Physical Sciences on 4, 5, and 6 March

28 February 2008—Klaus von Klitzing, director for solid-state research at the Max Planck Institute in Stuttgart, Germany, will present the Russell Marker Lectures in the Physical Sciences on 4, 5, and 6 March 2008 at the Penn State University Park campus.  Von Klitzing will give a public lecture titled "How Long is One Meter?--From Ancient Length Units to Modern Concepts in Metrology" at 8:00 p.m. on 5 March in Ballroom AB at the Nittany Lion Inn.  The lecture will address the issue of length measurement, which is important in science and industry.  Von Klitzing will begin with a historical survey of units and will finish with the most recent developments that use fundamental physical constants as the basis for defining measurement units independently from space and time.  This free public lecture is sponsored by the Penn State Eberly College of Science.

Von Klitzing also will give two specialized lectures as part of this series.  The first lecture, titled "News From Quantum Hall Physics," will take place at 3:30 p.m. on 4 March in S-5 Osmond Laboratory.  The second lecture, titled "From Micro- to Nanoelectronics," will take place at 4:00 p.m. on 6 March in 117 Osmond Laboratory. A social will be held prior to this talk at 3:30 p.m. in the overpass between Davey Osmond Laboratories.

Von Klitzing is best known for discovering the quantum Hall effect, for which he was awarded the 1985 Nobel Prize in Physics.  The ordinary Hall effect occurs when a magnetic field, applied perpendicular to the flow of current in an electrical conductor, induces a transverse voltage.  Von Klitzing found that the Hall resistance of two-dimensional electrons confined to the interface between two semiconductors assumes quantized values at low temperatures and strong magnetic fields.  The finding has led to a new definition of the fundamental unit of resistance.

Von Klitzing's other honors include the Schottky Prize, the Hewlett Packard Prize, the Dirac Medal, the Philipp Morris Preis, the Eötvös Medal, and the Award for Lifetime Achievement in Science from the Birla Science Center.  In addition to receiving 15 honorary degrees, he has been elected to numerous academies, including the U. S. National Academy of Sciences, the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society of London, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Academia Europaea, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Korean Academy of Sciences.

After studying physics in Braunschweig, Germany, von Klitzing spent 10 years as a researcher at the University of Würzburg, where he earned his Ph.D.  In 1980, he became a professor at the Technical University of Munich, and in 1985 he became the director for solid-state research at the Max Planck Institute.  Von Klitzing's current research focuses on the properties of low-dimensional electronic systems, typically at low temperatures and in high magnetic fields.  He has made important contributions to the physics of nanotubes, graphene, quantum dots, and single-electron transistors.

The Marker Lectures were established in 1984 through a gift from Russell Earl Marker, professor emeritus of chemistry at Penn State, whose pioneering synthetic methods revolutionized the steroid-hormone industry and opened the door to the current era of hormone therapies, including the birth-control pill.  The Marker endowment allows the Penn State Eberly College of Science to present annual Marker Lectures in astronomy and astrophysics, the chemical sciences, evolutionary biology, genetic engineering, the mathematical sciences, and physics.  For more information or access assistance, contact Teri Spence in the Department of Physics at (814) 863-9759.

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